Debasish Sinha, PhD

Debasish Sinha received his PhD degree in immunology and did a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology and genetics at the National Eye Institute. He is an associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also a faculty member for the Graduate Program in Pathobiology and Visual Neuroscience Training Program, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a visiting faculty member in the Guest Professor Program of Tongji University, Shanghai, P.R. China. His laboratory uses rat spontaneous mutants and genetically engineered mice as genetic tools to explore the functions of glial cells during normal neuronal and vascular development and to probe how abnormalities in glial cells lead to central nervous system diseases. In addition, his laboratory also is interested in understanding the processes of autophagy and phagocytosis in retinal pigmented epithelial cells and regulation of the immune system in AMD. He is the chair of the Wilmer Science Seminar Series Committee, member of the Wilmer Research Meeting committee and director of the postdoctoral fellowship program at the Wilmer Eye Institute. He is currently the chair of the Professional Development and Educational Committee (PDEC) of the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). Dr. Sinha’s research is funded by the BrightFocus Foundation, Bayer Healthcare, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, National Institutes of Health, Research to Prevent Blindness, and other private foundations. He received the Sybil B. Harrington Special Scholar award for Macular Degeneration from Research to Prevent Blindness and the Carolyn K. McGillvray Award for Macular Degeneration Research from BrightFocus Foundation. He has been an invited Member of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Conference on Atrophic Macular Degeneration since 2012.