Dimitra Skondra MD, PhD
Associate Professor Ophthalmology & Visual Science and the Director of J. Terry Ernest Ocular Imaging Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, ILDimitra Skondra, an internationally renowned vitreoretinal surgeon and physician scientist, is an Associate Professor Ophthalmology & Visual Science and the Director of J. Terry Ernest Ocular Imaging Center. She is also the founder and leader of UChicago Retinal Microbiome and UChicago Retina Big Data/Bioinformatics team. She completed her ophthalmology residency at Weill Cornell Medical College/New York Presbyterian Hospital and her PhD/postdoctoral fellowship and vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at Harvard Medical School.
Her team focuses on the role of gut microbiome in retinal disorders in particular AMD and ROP. She is considered one of the international leaders and pioneers in this newly emerged field of retinal research using specialized gnotobiotic animal models she has developed and cutting-edge multi-omics approach to delineate the gut-retina axis interactions. Her team, using Big-Data and computational bioinformatics approach is also studying repurposing of known medications for AMD and other retinal and ocular disorders and her work has shown that metformin, a common anti-diabetic medication is protective for AMD and could represent a new therapeutic strategy for AMD.