Jayakrishna Ambati, MD

Jayakrishna Ambati, M.D. is recognized internationally as one of the leading experts in ocular angiogenesis and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). He is Professor of Physiology and Professor & Vice-Chair of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Kentucky. He has an active interest in treating age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy and in novel drug delivery strategies.

Dr. Ambati was trained as an electrical engineer at The Johns Hopkins University and then completed clinical and research fellowships in medical and surgical diseases of the retina and vitreous at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary of Harvard Medical School.

His laboratory has reported seminal advances in ocular vascular biology and immunology in revealing novel mechanisms of AMD and angiogenesis in journals such as Nature, Cell, Nature Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the 2010 ARVO Cogan Awardee and the winner of the 2010 Roger H. Johnson Memorial Award for Macular Degeneration Research. He is the 2011 ARVO Camras Translational Research Awardee and the winner of 2011 Cless Best of the Best Award. He is the first ophthalmologist to win the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research, and the Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging Award. Research to Prevent Blindness has awarded him its Senior Scientific Investigator Award, Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award, and Physician-Scientist Award. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to The Macula Society, The American Society for Clinical Investigation and was the first ophthalmologist to be elected to The Association of American Physicians. He serves on the Editorial Board of IOVS, is an Associate Editor of Ophthalmology, an Associate Editor of Translational Vision Science & Technology, and is listed in “Best Doctors in America.”