Richard David Semba

Last updated

Richard D. Semba is an American ophthalmologist, medical researcher and professor. Semba currently is the W. Richard Green Professor of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he leads the Semba laboratory. He is Affiliated Faculty with the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Contents

Early life and education

Semba grew up in Minneapolis. He graduated from Yale University (B.S., Biology, 1978), where he also worked as a field assistant in the Division of Ornithology of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He subsequently pursued graduate studies at Stanford University (M.A., Latin American Studies and M.D., 1983), and Johns Hopkins University (M.P.H., 1991). [1] He completed his residency training in ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute (1984–1987). [2]

Career

In 1987, he became an instructor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, reaching the rank of full professor in 2006. [2]

Semba has conducted field research in Indonesia, Malaysia, Liberia, Malawi, Uganda, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico. His research interests include nutrition and aging, sustainable diets and food systems, and the history of medicine and nutrition. The Semba laboratory at Johns Hopkins University applies mass spectrometry, proteomics, and metabolomics to gain insight into human aging and aging-related diseases such as child stunting, age-related macular degeneration, and Alzheimer's disease. [3] [4] Dr. Semba has authored or co-authored over 400 scientific peer-reviewed publications. He is author or co-author of several books: Handbook of Nutrition and Ophthalmology (2007), Nutrition and Health in Developing Countries, 2nd. ed. (2008), [5] The Vitamin A Story: Lifting the Shadow of Death (2012), and A Perfect Vision: Catalogue of the William Holland Wilmer Rare Book Collection (Johns Hopkins, 2013).

He has been active in numerous professional and scientific organizations. In 1984 he became a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. In 1992 Semba joined the World Health Organization for epidemiology and by 1994 he joined both the American Institute of Nutrition and the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. In the same period he worked as a molecular microbiologist at the same place. In 1996 he joined the Society for International Nutrition Research to which he still belongs. From 1999 to 2002 he served on board of directors at the Dwight Hall Center for Social Justice, a division of Yale University. [2]

In 2002 he joined Gerontological Society of America and the same year became a part of Women's Eye Health which was a division of the Schepens Eye Research Institute and Harvard Medical School. From 2004 to 2006 he worked as a regional advisor at the Helen Keller International and by 2006 became a consultant for the United Nations World Food Programme. Ten years later he joined the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. He also is a member of the Human Proteome Organization, and leads its Human Eye Proteome Project. [6]

He has been a featured speaker at national and international conferences, including events sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association, the Gerontological Society of America,  the Gordon Research Conferences, the European Nutrition Congress, the British Society for Immunology, the International Congress of Pediatrics, the National Library of MedicineInternational Society for Infectious Diseases, International Congress of Nutrition, American Society for Microbiology, and many universities including Harvard UniversityUlster University,  University of Washington, Tufts University School of Medicine,  Johns Hopkins University,  Emory University School of MedicineCase Western Reserve University School of Medicine, University of Alabama, and others.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health</span> American private university

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epidemiology and training in public health, and the largest public health training facility in the United States, the school is ranked first in public health in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and has held that ranking since 1994.

Neuro-ophthalmology is an academically-oriented subspecialty that merges the fields of neurology and ophthalmology, often dealing with complex systemic diseases that have manifestations in the visual system. Neuro-ophthalmologists initially complete a residency in either neurology or ophthalmology, then do a fellowship in the complementary field. Since diagnostic studies can be normal in patients with significant neuro-ophthalmic disease, a detailed medical history and physical exam is essential, and neuro-ophthalmologists often spend a significant amount of time with their patients.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Sommer</span>

Alfred (Al) Sommer is a prominent American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent. The World Bank and the Copenhagen Consensus list vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the world.

David Anthony Newsome M.D. FARVO was a scientist, ophthalmologist, inventor, and author. He studied the treatment of age-related macular degeneration and proposed the usefulness of zinc supplements to slow the rate of vision loss from age-related macular degeneration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fight for Sight (U.S.)</span>

Fight for Sight is a nonprofit organization in the United States which funds medical research in vision and ophthalmology. It was formed in 1946 as the National Council to Combat Blindness (NCCB), the first non-profit organization in the United States to fund vision research; 2011 marked its 65th anniversary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arnall Patz</span>

Arnall Patz was an American medical doctor and research professor at Johns Hopkins University. In the early 1950s, Patz discovered that oxygen therapy was the cause of an epidemic of blindness among some 10,000 premature babies. Following his discovery, there was a sixty percent reduction in childhood blindness in the United States. He also conducted pioneering research in the 1960s into the use of lasers in the treatment of retinal disorders. He received the Lasker Award in 1956 for his research into the causes and prevention of blindness and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 for his lifetime of work in the field of ophthalmology.

Elias I. Traboulsi is a physician in the fields of ophthalmic genetics and pediatric ophthalmology.

David Paton is a retired ophthalmologist best known as founder in 1970 of Project Orbis and thereafter as its first Medical Director helping to develop (1970–1982) and then deploy its teaching aircraft for ophthalmologists worldwide, especially in the developing nations. Paton resigned from Orbis in 1987 and focused on other aspects of academic ophthalmology, but in 2011 he returned in a voluntary capacity to assist in fund raising for a new annual appointment, the David Paton Orbis Fellowship in Global Ophthalmology.

Julia A. Haller is an American ophthalmologist who is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. She also holds the William Tasman, M.D. Endowed Chair at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, where she is Ophthalmologist-in-Chief.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Clarke Fenselau</span> American scientist

Catherine Clarke Fenselau is an American scientist who was the first trained mass spectrometrist on the faculty of an American medical school; she joined Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1968. She specializes in biomedical applications of mass spectrometry. She has been recognized as an outstanding scientist in the field of bioanalytical chemistry because of her work using mass spectrometry to study biomolecules.

Rohit Varma is an Indian-American ophthalmologist and professor of ophthalmology and preventive medicine. In 2014, he was named director of the USC Eye Institute and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology for Keck School of Medicine of USC. In March 2016, Varma was named the interim dean of the Keck School of Medicine, and in November was named dean. In October 2017, USC announced that he stepped down as dean. In October 2018, Varma became the founding director of the Southern California Eyecare and Vision Research Institute.

Mark S. Humayun is a Pakistani-American ophthalmologist, engineer, scientist, inventor and academic – the only ophthalmologist elected a member of both U.S. National Academies of Medicine and Engineering. He is a university professor with joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Alfred Edward Maumenee Jr. was an American ophthalmologist who pioneered treatments for retinal diseases, macular degeneration and glaucoma and was a leading surgeon for corneal transplants and cataracts.

John Donald MacIntyre Gass was a Canadian-American ophthalmologist, one of the world's leading specialists on diseases of the retina. He was the first to describe many macular diseases.

Steven J. Fliesler is an American biochemist and cell biologist, whose research has focused on how lipid metabolism supports the normal structure and function of the vertebrate retina. He currently is the Meyer H. Riwchun Endowed Chair Professor of Ophthalmology and vice-chair and director of research in the department of ophthalmology, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. In 2014, he became a UB Distinguished Professor, and in 2018 was promoted to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor. He is the author or coauthor of more than 150 publications, including peer-reviewed scientific/biomedical journal articles, books and book chapters.

Joanne Katz is an epidemiologist, biostatistician, and Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds joint appointments in the Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Ophthalmology. Her expertise is in maternal, neonatal, and child health. She has contributed to the design, conduct and analysis of data from large community based intervention trials on nutritional and other interventions in Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal and other countries.

Neil M. Bressler is an American ophthalmologist. He is the James P. Gills Professor of Ophthalmology and chief of the Retina Division at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of JAMA Ophthalmology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrienne Williams Scott</span> American ophthalmologist

Adrienne Williams Scott is an American ophthalmologist specialized in diabetic retinopathy, epiretinal membranes, and macular degeneration. She is chief of the Wilmer Eye Institute in Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland. She is an associate professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Sheila Kay West is an American ophthalmologist who is the El-Maghraby Professor of Preventive Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute. She is also the vice-chair for Research.

Peter J. McDonnell is an American ophthalmologist who is the director of the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute and the William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

References

  1. "Richard D. Semba, M.A., M.D., M.P.H., Professor of Ophthalmology".
  2. 1 2 3 "Richard David Semba" (PDF). February 21, 2013. pp. 1–43.
  3. "Richard Semba". Center for a Livable Future. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  4. "The -omics approach reveals a key to the problem of child malnutrition : An interview with Professor Richard D. Semba, Johns Hopkins University". Human Proteome Organization. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  5. "A Day in the Life of Richard D.Semba and Martin W. Bloem - Sight and Life sight_life_admin". Sight and Life. 2008-03-23. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  6. "Human Eye Proteome Project (EyeOME)". www.hupo.org. Retrieved 2023-01-12.