Lyndsay Leach, PhD, is a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Her main research focus is to understand the molecular signals driving retinal pigment epithelium regeneration with the long-term goal of discovering therapeutic approaches for related degenerative diseases. Dr. Leach earned her bachelor's degree in biology from Skidmore College and her master's and doctoral degrees in biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she improved methods for differentiating retinal pigment epithelium from human pluripotent stem cells in the laboratory of Dr. Dennis Clegg.
Prior to her role as a research scientist, she completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine with Dr. Jeff Gross, whose laboratory uses the zebrafish as a model to study ocular development and regeneration. As a trainee, she received multiple awards in the field of vision research, including a Fight for Sight Summer Student Fellowship, a Garland Initiative for Vision Scholarship, funding from the Pennsylvania Lions Sight Conservation and Eye Research Foundation, and a Wiegand Fellowship in Ophthalmology. In addition to her research pursuits, Dr. Leach also values her role as a mentor to undergraduate and graduate students.