NANOS Members in the News

This year's winner of the Heed Award for academic excellence given for outstanding achievements in all three areas of the academic mission: Clinical excellence, research and teaching:

Alfredo A. Sadun, MD

Dr. Sadun has received the greatest distinction in all three of the classical academic missions. His research in vision was honored by the lifetime achievement award given by Lighthouse International, the 1999 Pisart Award, His contributions to residency teaching in ophthalmology were honored by the combined AAO and AUPO highest award for education, the 2002 Straatsma Prize. Dr. Sadun received the 2012 Hoyt Award for clinical neuro-ophthalmology, given jointly by the AAO and NANOS. He also received the prestigious Heed Award for Academic Excellence at the AAO meetings in 2014. Dr. Sadun has been recognized as an international authority in neuro-ophthalmology and especially diseases of the optic nerve. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles, 70 book chapters and co-authored or edited 4 books. He serves as an editorial board member for IOVS and several other editorial boards and peer-reviews regularly for about 15 journals. He has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 25 years and holds 5 patents. His scholarly achievements have been recognized by several organizations including the Research for the Prevention of Blindness (RPB) James Adams Scholar Award, RPB Senior Investigator Award, AAO Honor Award, Senior Honor Award, Secretariat Award and ARVO Fellow Award. In 1993 he was selected and sponsored by the United Nations to lead an investigative team to determine the cause of an epidemic of optic neuropathy in Cuba. This work led to further investigations into the role of mitochondria in optic neuropathies due to injury from nutritional, toxic and genetic causes. Dr. Sadun has organized and led about three dozen international investigators in twelve yearly field investigations for studying the world’s largest pedigree of LHON in Brazil. In these and other studies, he has investigated the role of mitochondria in controlling many of the processes of neuronal apoptosis.

http://www.heed.org/society/news/