Christine A. Curcio, PhD

Dr. Curcio is professor of ophthalmology, Eminent Scholar in Retina, and director of the AMD Histopathology Lab. She also serves as scientific director of the Alabama Eye Bank. Capitalizing on the eye bank as a resource, her research focuses on aging, age-related macular degeneration with emphasis on pathobiology, image validation through histology, and collaborative genomics studies.

Dr. Curcio has authored or co-authored more than 90 journal articles and has presented abstracts at vision meetings every year since 1985. She has given around 150 invited lectures at major meetings, congresses and universities in North America and Europe. Dr. Curcio serves on the editorial boards of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Current Eye Research and Progress in Retinal and Eye Research. She serves as permanent member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Eye Institute, and starting in February 2014 she serves as a charter member of Disease and Pathology of Visual Study section.

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, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Initiative for Macular Research, Macula Vision Research Foundation, and industry.

Dr. Curcio obtained her undergraduate degree in biology from Brown University in 1972. She attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received a Ph.D. in anatomy from the University of Rochester in 1981 under the supervision of Paul Coleman, Ph.D. After post-doctoral work at the Boston University School of Medicine with James Hinds, Ph.D., she spent six years at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she began anatomical studies of the human retina that are now widely cited, in the laboratory of Anita Hendrickson, Ph.D. In 1990, Dr. Curcio joined the UAB Department of Ophthalmology, where she is now a professor.

Dr. Curcio has been awarded the University of Washington School of Medicine, Science in Medicine - New Investigator (1988), the Roger H. Johnson Prize in Macular Degeneration Research from University of Washington (2002), Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Silver Fellow (2009) and Gold Fellow (2010), and the Prix Soubrane de la Recherche en Ophtalmologie (2011).