Flaum Eye Institute Director Takes Helm of National Ophthalmology Group

Steven E. Feldon, M.D., M.B.A., director of the Flaum Eye Institute at the University of Rochester Medical Center, was named president of the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology. The organization is dedicated to advancing the education, research and clinical care provided by academic medical center’s ophthalmologists. He will serve a one-year term.  

Feldon takes the helm of the organization with a broad understanding of the many challenges that academic ophthalmologists face balancing clinical, educational and scientific responsibilities. He is an internationally recognized clinical and basic scientist specializing in orbital disease and neuro-ophthalmology, an inventor of ophthalmic instruments, and an entrepreneur and business executive.   

Among his career accomplishments, he has invented ophthalmic instruments and an electronic medical record-keeping system and subsequently built companies to manufacture and market them. As the founding director of the Flaum Eye Institute, Feldon has grown the institution dramatically, adding more than 25 basic scientists and clinical faculty in just 12 years. 

Through his research, Feldon developed a predictive technique for determining which Graves' disease patients are at risk for visual loss, and his current research involves investigating the biological origin of Graves' disease. He also leads the visual field and photographic center for a national trial in the treatment of idiopathic intracranial hypertension.

Feldon earned his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed his residency at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, Harvard University, along with three fellowships: a research fellowship in neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, a clinical fellowship in ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and a clinical fellowship in neuro-ophthalmology at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco.

He practiced at the Doheny Eye Institute in Los Angeles, where he served as associate chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Southern California, before joining URMC in 2001.