New Orleans, LA – Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, has invited Jayne S. Weiss, MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology, Herbert E. Kaufman, MD Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology, and Director of LSU Eye Center of Excellence at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, to serve on the National Advisory Eye Council. Effective immediately, she will serve a four-year term. Dr. Weiss is among the 12 members chosen in the United States, and the only member from Louisiana.
According to the National Eye Institute (one of the institutes of the National Institutes of Health), the Council advises, assists, consults with, and makes recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the National Eye Institute (NEI) on matters related to the activities carried out by and through the NEI and the policies respecting these activities. The Council may review applications for grants and cooperative agreements for research and training and recommend approval of applications for projects which show promise of making valuable contributions to human knowledge; may review any grant, contract, or cooperative agreement proposed to be made or entered into by the Institute; may collect, by correspondence or by personal investigation, information as to studies which are being carried on in the United States or any other country and, with the approval of the Director of NEI, make available such information through appropriate publications for the benefit of public and private health entities, health professions personnel and scientists, and for the information of the general public.
A native of New York City, New York, Dr. Weiss graduated from State University of Buffalo summa cum laude with a 4.0 average and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Mt. Sinai Medical School in 1979 and was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honor society. She completed her residency training in ophthalmology at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami School of Medicine in 1983 followed by a fellowship in ocular pathology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School in Boston and a fellowship in cornea and external eye diseases at Emory University in Atlanta.
Dr. Weiss was Visiting Professor at Tri Service General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan in 1985 and Fulbright Professor at Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine in Harare Zimbabwe in 1986. She subsequently served as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at University of Massachusetts Medical Center from 1986 to 1995. She joined Kresge Eye Institute, the Department of Ophthalmology at Wayne State University in 1995 and left in 2011 as Professor of Ophthalmology and Pathology, and Director of Refractive Surgery, when LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans recruited her.
Dr. Weiss' principal clinical and research interests are corneal and external diseases, refractive surgery, and corneal dystrophies. Her interest in Schnyder's dystrophy spans 18 years during which time she has studied the clinical findings, visual prognosis and discovered the causative gene for this disease.
Dr. Weiss was Chair of the FDA Ophthalmic Devices Panel, Chair of the American Academy of Ophthalmology Basic and Clinical Sciences Courses (13 books) ,Chair of the American Academy of Ophthalmology Basic and Clinic Sciences Course on Refractive Surgery and edited its first book on Refractive Surgery and Scientific Program Director of the Eye Bank Association of America. She was Acting Chair for the April 2008 FDA meeting on LASIK.
She has been a member of the Basic and Clinical Sciences Course on Cornea and External Eye Diseases, member of NIH Visual Sciences Study Section, Eye Bank Association Research Committee, Preferred Practice Plan for Cornea and External Eye Diseases and the Eye Bank Committee of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, member of the Board of Directors of the Cornea Society and member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Eye Bank Association of America.
Dr. Weiss has received the Service Advisory Award from the FDA and two Secretariat Awards from the American Academy of Ophthalmology. She presently is Chair of the International Committee for Classification of the Corneal Dystrophies, consultant to the FDA Ophthalmic Devices Panel, and a member of the editorial boards of Cornea journal. She has authored 90 articles and chapters.
LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's academic health leader, LSUHSC comprises a School of Medicine, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, Nursing, and Graduate Studies. LSUHSC faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSUHSC research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSUHSC faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu and http://www.twitter.com/LSUHSCHealth.