The University of Utah has selected John A. Moran Eye Center surgeon-scientist Mary Elizabeth Hartnett, MD, to receive its prestigious Distinguished Research Award.
The award recognizes outstanding achievements in research by faculty and provides a $10,000 research grant and recognition at the University’s commencement ceremony.
Hartnett, a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, directs Moran’s Pediatric Retina Center and is an internationally recognized leader in retinal research. Continuously supported by the National Institutes of Health for the past two decades, her angiogenesis-focused laboratory works to understand what causes blood vessels to grow outside their normal tissue compartments and into other areas of the eye where they cause damage.
Hartnett’s seminal research has changed the field’s understanding of and treatment approaches for two blinding diseases: age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness for adults 55 and older, and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a leading cause of childhood blindness that affects premature infants.
A prolific researcher, Hartnett has published more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and created new disease models to enable research breakthroughs.
Her previous honors include the Weisenfeld Award, the highest award for clinician-scientists given by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, in 2018. She received the 2019 Paul Kayser/Retina Research Foundation Global Award, the Macula Society’s 2016 Paul Henkind Award and its 2019 Arnall Patz Medal.