Today, we are pleased to officially welcome SriniVas Sadda, MD, FARVO as Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and leader of Duke Eye Center. An internationally recognized physician-scientist, educator, and innovator, Sadda joins Duke with a distinguished career of advancing retinal imaging, data science, clinical research, and patient care.
Sadda arrives at Duke following a renowned career at Doheny Eye Institute and the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, as the A. Ray Irvine, Jr., MD, Endowed Chair in Clinical Ophthalmology and Professor of Ophthalmology. He completed his medical degree, residency, and fellowship training at Johns Hopkins University’s Wilmer Eye Institute, where he trained in both neuro-ophthalmology and medical retina. A highly accomplished physician-scientist, his research focuses on automated retinal image analysis, retinal substructure assessment, and advanced imaging technologies.
Throughout his career, Sadda has helped shape the future of ophthalmology through groundbreaking research, visionary leadership, and a commitment to developing the next generation of eye care professionals. As we begin this new chapter, we are excited to partner with him to build upon Duke Ophthalmology's strong legacy of excellence in patient care, research, education, and innovation.
"I am honored to join Duke Ophthalmology and Duke Eye Center, an institution with an extraordinary legacy of excellence in patient care, research, and education. From my first conversations with faculty, trainees, and staff, it was clear that Duke's greatest strength is its people. I look forward to working together to build on this remarkable foundation, advance innovation through collaboration, and create new opportunities to improve vision and quality of life for patients locally and around the world," said Sadda.
Please join us in welcoming Sadda to the Duke community. We look forward to his leadership and the many opportunities ahead as we continue advancing our mission to preserve and restore vision through exceptional patient care, transformative research, and outstanding education.
Welcome to Duke, Dr. Sadda!
OT: What is your core mission for the Duke Department of Ophthalmology—and what does success look like at the end of your first term as chair?
My mission is to build on Duke’s extraordinary legacy and make this the place where the future of ophthalmology is defined. That means delivering exceptional patient care in an environment where innovation, discovery, education, and collaboration reinforce one another rather than operate as separate missions.
Success in my first term wouldn’t be measured by rankings or clinical volume alone, though both matter. I want Duke to be the destination where outstanding clinicians, scientists, and trainees build their careers because they know they can accomplish things here that are difficult anywhere else. That means expanded access to care, strengthened leadership in clinical and translational research, exceptional faculty, and new partnerships across engineering, AI, and data science that change how eye disease is diagnosed, monitored, and treated. I want Duke recognized not just for excellence today, but for shaping what ophthalmology becomes over the next decade.
OT: Every department chair brings a leadership philosophy. How would you describe yours, and how will it shape the culture you build at Duke?
My philosophy centers on empowering outstanding people. Great departments aren’t built by the chair. They’re built by talented faculty, trainees, and staff who are given the support, trust, and opportunity to do their best work. My job is to articulate a clear vision, remove barriers, recruit exceptional people, and reward collaboration.
Culture matters enormously. I want Duke Ophthalmology known for collegiality, integrity, and a willingness to embrace innovation. Academic medicine works best when clinicians, scientists, educators, and administrators see themselves as partners in a common purpose. When people are excited to come to work and believe they’re contributing to something larger than themselves, extraordinary things happen.
OT: Duke has deep institutional infrastructure in AI and data science. How does that fit into your vision for where ophthalmology research needs to go — and what could a Duke-based program accomplish that wouldn’t be possible elsewhere?
Ophthalmology has always been technology-driven, but we’re entering a new era in which imaging, AI, and large-scale clinical data will fundamentally reshape how we understand and care for patients. The question is no longer whether AI becomes part of ophthalmology, but how we develop it responsibly, validate it rigorously, and integrate it in ways that genuinely improve outcomes.
Few institutions are better positioned than Duke to lead that. The combination of world-class ophthalmology, engineering, computer science, biomedical imaging, and clinical research creates an ecosystem that’s difficult to replicate. My vision is an integrated platform that brings these strengths together to accelerate discovery, enable precision medicine, and create continuously learning systems that improve with every patient encounter. The real opportunity is to move beyond individual algorithms toward an entirely new model for how care, research, and data science interact. That’s where the greatest long-term impact lies.
I have recently written about this in an editorial to the American Journal of Ophthalmology. Quarta A, Lee AY, Sadda SR. Artificial intelligence in ophthalmic research and patient care—what are we really afraid of? Am J Ophthalmol. 2026;289:348-350. doi:10.1016/j.ajo.2026.05.014
OT: What is your vision for how Duke trains the next generation of ophthalmologists—and are there gaps in residency and fellowship models across the field that you would like to help close from this platform?
Our responsibility goes well beyond training outstanding surgeons. We have to prepare ophthalmologists for a profession that will look very different in 10 or 20 years. Advances in imaging, AI, precision medicine, gene therapy, and regenerative medicine are changing the field rapidly, and our educational models have to evolve with them.
I want Duke to be a national leader in preparing physician-scientists, clinician-educators, and future department leaders who are comfortable working across disciplines and embracing new technology while holding to an unwavering commitment to compassionate care. That includes giving trainees far more exposure to clinical research, innovation, implementation science, and health systems leadership, so they help shape the future of healthcare rather than simply adapt to it.
OT: If you could point to one challenge in ophthalmology—clinical, scientific, or structural—that Duke is uniquely positioned to solve under your leadership, what would it be?
One of the greatest challenges in ophthalmology is translating the enormous amount of clinical information we collect into better decisions for individual patients. Every day we generate extraordinary volumes of imaging, genetic, and clinical data, yet much of it goes underused because we lack systems that turn data into actionable knowledge.
Duke is uniquely positioned to solve that. By integrating advanced imaging, AI, engineering, clinical research, and outstanding patient care, we can build a true learning eye health system, one where every patient encounter contributes to discovery, every discovery informs care, and every innovation improves outcomes for future patients. If we get that right, Duke won’t just advance ophthalmology. It will help define how medicine more broadly uses data, technology, and collaboration to improve human health.