Priya Chaudhary, PhD

Dr. Chaudhary works on understanding the pathophysiology at the optic nerve head in glaucoma at the Devers Eye Institute, Legacy Research Institute. She has extensive experience in neuroscience research and drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases. She has been a part of several National Institutes of Health (NIH), Veterans Affairs (VA), and private grants as Principal Investigator (PI), co-PI and co-investigator. This current BrightFocus grant allows her to showcase her work understanding neurodegeneration in glaucoma using cutting edge technology. In this BrightFocus proposal, Drs. Yang and Chaudhary will identify mechanisms underlying structural change in an experimental glaucoma monkey model. We propose to develop and optimize novel methods to automatically co-localize cellular and molecular alterations obtained from optic nerve head sections after death to in vivo images taken during various time points in experimental glaucoma. The overarching goal of this project is to enhance the interpretation of early alterations in glaucoma thus providing guidance for improving treatment options before the glaucomatous damage becomes permanent and untreatable.