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Meet Our Team

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Sun Young Lee
M.D., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Physiology & Neuroscience

Principle Investigator

MD Pusan National University, S. Korea

PhD University of Ulsan, S. Korea

Intern/Ophthalmology Resident/Surgical Retina Fellowship Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan, S. Korea

Post doctoral Johns Hopkins University, USA

Intern/Ophthalmology Resident University of Southern California, USA

Surgical Retina Fellowship University of Iowa, USA

Dimitrios (Dimitri) Pollalis
M.D.

Post-Doctoral Fellow

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Dimitri received his medical degree from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece in 2018. He started his post-doc fellowship in 2020 and is pursuing a career in Ophthalmology.

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Mahrou Sadri
Ph. D.

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Mahrou received her Ph.D in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, USA. She joined the University of California, San Diego as post-doctoral fellow in 2020. She started her postdoctoral research position in Dr. Lee’s lab in 2024.

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Clarisa Marie Bloemhof
M.D. Candidate

Medical Student Research Assistant

Clarisa received her BS in Public Health Sciences and BA in Economics from UC Irvine and worked as an ophthalmic technician, which piqued her interest in the field. Currently, she is a third-year medical student at the California University of Science and Medicine.

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Justin Leung
B.S.

Research Assistant

Justin recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a major in Neuroscience and a minor in Health Care Studies. He is on a pre-medical track and is interested in pursuing ophthalmology in the future.

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Susan Kishi
M.D. Candidate

Medical Student Research Assistant

​Susan is a second-year medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She received her B.S. in Neuroscience with a minor in Musical Studies of the French horn from USC. She is working towards a career in ophthalmology.

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Daisy

Member In-Training

2022-Present

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Late Miss Bella

Founding Member

????-2022

Lab Alumni

John Surbeck

Medical Student

Project: Increased Glial Fibrillary Acid Protein and Vimentin in Vitreous Fluid as a Biomarker for Proliferative Vitreoretinopathy

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Austin LaGrow

Medical Student

Project: Endophthalmitis After Transconjunctival Pars Plana Vitrectomy: A 6-year Experience Without Prophylactic Intraoperative Subconjunctival Antibiotics

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Cynthia McClard

Ophthalmology Resident

Project: Utility of No-Charge Panel Genetic Testing for Inherited Retinal Diseases in a Real-World Clinical Setting

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Arjun Nanda

Medical Student

Project: Fiji-Assisted Automatic Quantitative Volumetric Analysis of Choroidal Neovascularization in a Laser-Induced Choroidal Neovascularization Mouse Model

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Gopa Kumar Gopinadhan Nair

Research Associate

Projects: Proteomic Insight into the Role of Exosomes in Proliferative Vitreoretinopathy Development, Intraocular RGD-Engineered Exosomes and Active Targeting of Choroidal Neovascularization (CNV), and more

Our Collaborators

In order to successfully carry out our experiments and analysis, we partner with various laboratories in colleges and institutions across the United States.

Funding

Our research would not be possible without our grants and donors. We greatly appreciate their support in allowing us to further the field of retinal ophthalmology.

National Eye Institute

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Alcon Research Institute

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