John Werner, UC Davis professor of ophthalmology, has received two grants totaling more than $6 million from the National Eye Institute to conduct research into the cellular origins of blinding diseases and to develop a UC Davis campus-wide training program in vision science.

The institute has awarded Werner a grant of more than $5 million to develop new instrumentation for imaging single cells in the living human retina. Currently, it is not possible to photograph or see the photorecep tors or ganglion cells in the living eye even though they are important for early diagnosis of retinal disease. Werner and his research team aim to combine adaptive optics technology and optical coherence tomography to develop instruments for use in basic research and clinical research designed to find the cellular origins of blinding diseases.

The institute also has awarded Werner a grant of more than $1 million to establish an interdisciplinary training program in vision science for advanced graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.