Josh Dunaief, MD PhD
Aim 1: Find a passion.
At 10 years old, Josh gazed through a slit lamp in his father’s office. Though it may have been the motorized exam chair that hooked him on ophthalmology, he knew he wanted to become an ophthalmologist.
During his undergraduate career at Harvard, Josh’s Lowell House pre-medical advisor was Daniel Albert who had discovered the retinoblastoma gene with Ted Dryja and Robert Weinberg.
Aim 2: Put in 10,000 hours of pipetting.
After leaving Harvard, Josh began his medical education at Columbia University in the Medical Scientist Training Program. As a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Stephen Goff, Josh continued to work on retinoblastoma. His graduate career culminated in a first-author publication in Cell which has since been cited hundreds of times. For his graduate work Josh received the "Most Outstanding PhD Award." Josh went on to residency at Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute.
Aim 3: Survive residency.
At Hopkins Josh continued his study of retinoblastoma with Donald Zack. In his final year of residency, Josh received a K08 grant, funded by the National Eye Institute, and joined the faculty of the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
Aim 4: Become a PI.
At Penn Josh launched a new line of inquiry - examining the role of oxidative stress in age-related macular degeneration. While studying The Foundation Fighting Blindness’s collection of postmortem AMD retinas, Josh and his team found elevated iron levels in AMD retinas. This work was reported in 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and was the subject of his first NEI R01. Josh hasn’t looked back since, continuing to study the link between iron, oxidative stress and neurodegeneration.
Aim 5: Mentor the next generation.
Over the past 20+ years at Penn Josh has mentored more than 70 undergraduate, graduate, medical and postdoctoral students. Many of them have gone on to pursue basic science and clinical research professionally, starting their own labs and clinical practices.