Dr. Aaron Lee receives ASRS Young Investigator Award

Aaron Lee, MD, Associate Professor and C. Dan and Irene Hunter Endowed Professor, received the 2023 President’s Young Investigator Award during the recent American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) annual scientific meeting at the Seattle Convention Center.

The award is given by the ASRS Foundation to nurture the development of next-generation retina leaders. It recognizes an ASRS member age 45 or younger who has made substantial contributions to the field of retina that will potentially improve patients’ lives.

Dr. Lee chairs the American Academy of Ophthalmology Information Technology Steering Committee. He is an associate editor for Translational Vision Science & Technology and Ophthalmology Science and is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Ophthalmology and Nature Scientific Reports. Dr. Lee has published over 175 peer-reviewed manuscripts and is known as a leader in the field of artificial intelligence and ophthalmology.

His research is focused on the translation of novel computation techniques in machine learning to uncover new disease associations and mechanisms from routine clinical data, including electronic health records and imaging. In 2022, Dr. Aaron Lee and Klorfine Family Chair and Professor Cecilia Lee, MD were jointly awarded a $33 million, four-year grant as part of the Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) program, a new initiative by the National Institutes of Health to expand the use of artificial intelligence in biomedical and behavioral research. Artificial intelligence holds great promise for enabling research breakthroughs and improving clinical care. For more details about this project, read the UW Newsroom article here.