Steven DeVries Named Shoch Professor In Ophthalmology

CHICAGO --- Steven DeVries, M.D., associate professor of ophthalmology in Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, has been named the David Shoch Professor in Ophthalmology.

DeVries studies how visual information is processed by local networks of retinal neurons. His most recent work focuses on how the signals produced by light in mammalian cone photoreceptors are transmitted to other retinal neurons. Cones mediate vision in bright light and transmit signals at structurally elaborate synaptic contacts. DeVries' work highlights the different functions of the cone synapse and has implications for treatments that might restore damaged cones by transplantation.

DeVries' laboratory is currently funded by two independent investigator awards from the National Eye Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. He previously received funding from Research to Prevent Blindness, including a Career Development Award and a Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award.

DeVries has published in leading journals such as Nature, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience and Current Biology. He is a member of the Biology and Diseases of the Posterior Eye study section of the National Institutes of Health. He was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience in 1988.

DeVries received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Before joining the Northwestern faculty in 2001, he completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University and served on the faculties at the University of Chicago and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.