Debasish Sinha, PhD

Debasish Sinha received his PhD degree in immunology followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology and genetics at the National Eye Institute. He is an associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, at 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 guest professor at The Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 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 is interested in understanding the processes of autophagy and phagocytosis in retinal pigmented epithelial cells and regulation of the immune system in AMD. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Research to Prevent Blindness and private foundations. He received the Sybil B. Harrington Special Scholar award for Macular Degeneration from the Research to Prevent Blindness as well as The Carolyn K. McGillvray Memorial Award for Macular Degeneration Research from The BrightFocus Foundation. He has been an invited member of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Conference on Atrophic Macular Degeneration since 2012.