Professor Christine A. Curcio, Ph.D., was named as the inaugural holder of the of the White-McKee Endowed Professorship in Ophthalmology by the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama in April 2018.
Dr. Curcio obtained an Sc.B. in Biology from Brown University, and received a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Anatomy from the University of Rochester in 1982. After post-doctoral research at the Boston University School of Medicine, she served 6 years as research faculty member at the University of Washington, where she focused on neurobiology of human retina. In 1990, Dr. Curcio joined the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Curcio has authored 165 peer-reviewed articles, presented original data at vision meetings every year since 1985, and given 242 invited presentations on 4 continents. She serves on the editorial boards of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science and Retina the Journal of VitreoRetinal Disease. She is a charter member of Disease and Pathology of Visual Study section for the National Institutes of Health. Her research has been funded by the National Eye Institute, Research to Prevent Blindness, International Retinal Research Foundation, Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation Awards Program, Beckman Initiative for Macular Research, Macula Vision Research Foundation, the Macula Foundation, EyeSight Foundation of Alabama, and corporate partners. She is a Gold Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.
Dr. Curcio focuses on aging and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the third largest cause of vision loss worldwide. Her current research focuses on validating imaging technology to help ophthalmologists understand retinal microstructure using optical coherence tomography and retinal lipids using fundus autofluorescence imaging. In collaboration with the Alabama Eye Bank, her laboratory studies images and tissue samples to discover basic mechanisms underlying AMD, hoping to develop better treatments for patients and diagnostic tools for their doctors.