Resident Completes Accomplished Tenure at Kellogg
David Wu has won major awards, completed a doctorate in vision science, and now will hold a retina fellowship — all at the Kellogg Eye Center
Graduating Kellogg resident David M. Wu, M.D., Ph.D., recently was awarded a prestigious Heed Fellowship as well as the special designation as a Fellow of the Society of Heed Fellows. Both awards are given annually to the most promising graduating ophthalmologists from around the country who choose to pursue subspecialty training after residency. These honors are the most recent in a long list of accomplishments for this budding physician–scientist—almost all of them achieved during his tenure at Kellogg.
"I was very honored to be awarded the Heed Fellowship because, more than anything, I think it represents how fortunate I am to have trained at Kellogg," says Dr. Wu.
Dr. Wu's relationship with Kellogg dates to his undergraduate research on retinal regeneration, which piqued his interest in vision science. When it came time to choose a focus for his thesis, Dr. Wu received some pivotal advice from Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D., then on the Kellogg faculty and now Director of the National Eye Institute.
"He said I should be in a vision environment for my training," says Dr. Wu, "and that Kellogg was one of the few places in the country where broad approaches to vision research were being applied at the highest level."
Because he was interested in electrophysiology, Dr. Wu chose Donald G. Puro, M.D., Ph.D., an ophthalmologist and electrophysiologist, as his mentor when he began his doctoral studies in vision research.
"Dr. Puro taught me that you can be both a great scientist and ophthalmologist," Dr. Wu says. "It then became my goal to do what he does—see patients, ask scientific questions based on their problems, and then go back to the lab and try to answer those questions."
After completing both his doctorate and medical degree at Michigan, Dr. Wu explored several residency programs but, again, all roads led back to Kellogg. "I found very few places that had both a strong clinical program and a strong vision research program, so I wanted to stay and was very happy that I matched here," he says.
Because of his retina interest, Dr. Wu sought out Kellogg's retina faculty during his residency. Throughout the past three years, he has worked with John R. Heckenlively, M.D., studying retinal dystrophies, and David N. Zacks, M.D., Ph.D., studying apoptosis— a type of cell death.
"There probably aren't too many residents in the country who have had the opportunities I've had because there aren't too many other Kelloggs—eye centers where you get top-notch clinical ophthalmology training plus get to work with and be mentored by top physician–scientists," he says.
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