Advance Research | Eye Center | UC Davis Health

Every advance in vision care begins with people willing to imagine what is possible. At the UC Davis Eye Center, our physicians and scientists are working to better understand, treat, and ultimately prevent blinding eye diseases, from the cornea to the cortex.

Gifts to the Eye Center general support fund provide flexible resources to pursue promising research, support exceptional faculty and trainees, advance patient care, and respond to emerging opportunities that can have an immediate impact. Your generosity gives our teams the freedom to pursue bold ideas and helps bring the next generation

of discoveries and treatments within reach.

Your generous gift will honor Dr. Mark Mannis for his steadfast dedication and service to the UC Davis Eye Center. As department chair for more than 20 years, Dr. Mannis has led the UC Davis Eye Center to new heights and his impact on teaching, research, and patient care is immeasurable. Under his leadership, the Eye Center has advanced technology and pioneering research. The depth and breadth of faculty and researcher expertise that has come to fruition under his leadership provides world-class eye care and offers hope for sight restoration to patients and their families. Among Dr. Mannis’ many accomplishments, he opened the Ernest E. Tschannen Eye Institute Building which expanded the department’s capacity for research and enhanced the ability to provide high-quality vision care to the community and beyond. As an educator, Dr. Mannis’ mentorship and guidance has launched many careers. In honor of these exceptional achievements, please join us in establishing a permanent endowed professorship in his honor.

Vision research at the UC Davis Eye Center is conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers in the School of Medicine, Veterinary School, and Primate Center. Together with campus vision scientists in 15 different departments and the Center for Neuroscience, our team distinguishes itself from virtually every other university eye center in the United States. Your gift will be used to support one of the world's leading vision research centers to preserve and restore sight, which benefits patient care and the training of new clinicians and researchers.

Some of the most promising ideas in vision research come from faculty early in their careers, when funding can be especially difficult to secure. These clinician-scientists need resources to test new ideas, gather preliminary data, and build the foundation needed to compete for major federal grants.

The Early-Stage Investigators Fund fills this critical gap, providing promising UC Davis Eye Center faculty with support at a pivotal point in their careers. They work within an exceptional research community spanning the School of Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, National Biomedical Research Institute, and Center for Neuroscience.

Your support can help move promising research forward when funding can make the greatest difference and invest in the scientists who will shape the future of vision care.

Glaucoma remains a leading cause of irreversible blindness, and once vision is lost, it cannot currently be restored. While today’s treatments can help slow vision loss, there is still much we need to understand about why glaucoma develops, how to detect it earlier, and how to better protect vision over a patient’s lifetime.

Gifts to the Glaucoma Research Fund help UC Davis Eye Center researchers pursue these questions and develop new approaches to prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Philanthropic support provides the resources to explore promising ideas, generate the evidence needed to advance larger studies, and accelerate research that might otherwise wait for traditional funding.

This fund provides support to collaborative vision research in honor of Dr. Ivan Schwab. This fund will assist in education, outreach and innovative research that will accelerate groundbreaking science and ultimately cures by advancing discoveries generated in the lab to studies in humans.