Meet the Benowitz Lab Team
Dr. Larry Benowitz, PhD holds the Neurosurgical Innovation and Research Professorship at Boston Children's Hospital and is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He received his PhD from Caltech with Nobel Laureate Roger Sperry and did postdoctoral research at MIT and Harvard Medical School before joining the Harvard faculty. He has mentored many students and postdoctoral fellows and is first- or senior author on over 150 papers, reviews and book chapters. He was named by Scientific American as one of the 50 leaders of the year in science and technology in 2006 and in 2013 was awarded the Lewis Rudin Prize for "the most significant scholarly article on glaucoma published in a peer-reviewed journal in the prior calendar year". Over the past few years, Dr. Benowitz has served or continues to serve on the Standing Committee on Honors and Awards of Harvard Medical School (former co-chair), Steering Committee of the Postdoctoral Training Program in Molecular Bases of Eye Diseases, Audacious Goals Working Group (National Eye Institute), Scientific Advisory Boards of the Vision Institute (l’Institut de la Vision, Paris: current position: President), Glaucoma Research Foundation, Vanderbilt Eye Institute, The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR) Foundation (Mission Connect, Houston, TX) and The Whitehall Foundation. During this period, Dr. Benowitz’ research has been supported by the National Eye Institute (NEI, NIH), the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Research Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Gilbert Family Foundation Vision Restoration Program, and the Boston Pediatric Neurosurgical Foundation.
Recent lectureships at conferences, symposia, and universities: 2016: Keynote speaker, Imperial College Ophthalmic Research Day (London, UK); Chinese Glaucoma Society (Xuzhou); Invited Symposium speaker: Winter Brain Conference, Breckenridge, CO; Association for Research in Ophthalmology (ARVO), Denver, CO; National Neurotrauma Society, Santa Fe, NM; Glaucoma 360, San Francisco, CA; Vision Recovery Conference, U.S. Army Med. Com., San Antonio, TX; Military Health System Research Symposium, Kissimee, FL; “Assembly and Disassembly of the Nervous System”, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel; Invited speaker Restoration of Vision Conf., Univ. Pittsburgh; American Society for Neural Repair, Chicago, IL; Wilmer Eye Center, Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine; Fox Center for Visual Repair, Univ. Pittsburgh; Cell Biology of the Neuron (Gordon Research Conference), Waterville Valley, NH; Dept. Neurobiology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH; Optic Nerve Conference, Obergürgl, Austria; Israel Society for Neurosci., Eilat Israel. 2016; Cambridge Univ.; Invited panel member, National Eye Institute, Chicago IL, Audacious Goals Initiative; Panel member, NEI Audacious Goals Initiative, San Diego, CA. 2017: Invited symposium speaker: Military Vision Symposium, Boston (Session Chair); Low Vision and the Brain 4th International Symposium, Berlin, Germany (Co-organizer); Invited speaker, ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology), Baltimore, MD; Fox Center for Visual Repair, Washington, DC; National Eye Institute Audacious Goals Initiative Meeting. Bethesda, MD; Glaucoma Technologies Scientific Meeting, Fort Worth, TX; International Society for Zinc Biology, Larnaca, Cyprus; Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Dept. Ophthalmology, Boston, MA; Neuroscience Virtual Event: Rewiring the Injured CNS: Insights from the Optic Nerve Model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkbPCnBcO8k; Invited panelist, Gilbert Visual Restoration Institute, Washington, DC. 2018: Keynote Speaker, Chinese Glaucoma Society, Guangzhou, China; Symposium speaker: “A Matter of Life or Death: Regulation of RGC survival by glia and interneurons”. Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), Honolulu, Hawaii (Organizer and speaker); World Ophthalmology Conference, Barcelona, Spain, “Restoring Sight in Glaucoma: Hype or Reality?”; Invited speaker: Harvard Med. School, Glaucoma Center for Excellence; Université Montréal; National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Ahmedabad, India (web-based); 2019: Invited speaker, Department of Ophthalmology, Emory Univ. (Atlanta); Fox Center for Visual Restoration (Univ. Pittsburgh/ Turnberry, FL); American Glaucoma Foundation, San Francisco, CA; Plenary speaker, International Conference on Neurological Disorders and Therapeutics, NIPER, Ahmedabad, India; Tel Aviv University (Israel); Tenth Anniversary Celebration, Institut de la Vision, Paris; Organized symposium “Vision at Boston Children’s Hospital”. 2020: Invited symposium speaker, World Ophthalmology Conference, Capetown S.A. “Hot Topics” session (online: “Neuroprotection and optic nerve regeneration”); Invited speaker, Baylor College of Medicine (online). Several others postposned due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 2021: Named lectureship: Enoch Lecturer, Washington University of St. Louis; Plenary speaker, Association for Ocular Pharmacology and Therapeutics biannual meeting (online); Symposium speaker: International Conference on Ophthalmology (China, onine); “Vision” Neuro Workshop, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland, online). Invited speaker, Neural Repair lecture series, UCLA (online); Fox Center for Visual Repair, Univ. Pittsburgh, PA (online); Boston Children’s Hospital (Inosine for CNS repair: translational potential -- online); Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil, online). 2022: Invited symposium speaker, 4th Guangzhou Glaucoma Forum (China: online); Participant, speaker, RReSTORe Workshop, Denver CO.
