Jennifer Sun, MD, MPH

  • Eye Care
Investigator and Staff Physician
Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Sun is a vitreoretinal surgeon and Chief of the Center for Clinical Eye Research and Trials of the Beetham Eye Institute, Joslin Diabetes Center. She is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. She also serves as the Chair for the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network (DRCR.net) and has chaired multiple nationwide, multicenter studies addressing new treatments and methods of evaluation for diabetic eye disease. Her research projects include the search for biomarkers of functional and anatomic outcomes in diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema through utilization of advanced retinal imaging techniques.

Research Interests

Dr. Sun's research projects include the search for protective factors against retinal complications in diabetes.  She also leads active studies identifying biomarkers of functional and anatomic outcomes in diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema through the utilization of advanced imaging techniques such as adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography angiography.

Education

Medical School: Harvard Medical School/BWH
Residency: Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary
Fellowship: Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary
Certification: Ophthalmology

Awards

Dr. Sun has chaired 5 nationwide, multicenter clinical studies, including the DME FOUND Study (Diabetic Macular Edema Found by OCT Utilization at Non-Ophthalmic Diabetes care visits) evaluating the use of point-of-care noninvasive retinal imaging at primary diabetes care visits to identify patients at risk for vision loss from diabetic macular edema and a phase 1 trial of an intravitreous plasma kallikrein inhibitor for diabetic macular edema.  She served as the first nationwide Protocol Chair of both the DRCR.net Ultrawide Field Imaging Study (Protocol AA) and the DRCR.net Prevention of Vision Threatening Complications in Eyes at High Risk through Anti-VEGF Treatment (Protocol W) Study. Dr. Sun is the CME Editor for JAMA Ophthalmology and was the Section Editor for the Microvascular Complications: Retinopathy section of Current Diabetes Reports from 2008-2017. Her recent publications have included articles in both the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA.  She received the 2008 ARVO/Alcon Early Career Clinician-Scientist Research Award and was recognized in 2016 with the Research to Prevent Blindness Physician-Scientist Award.

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