Generate a tailored SOP for Dr. Maria Abalem. Improve your application with a focused, well-structured draft.
Maria Fernanda Abalem, MD, MSc, PhD, is a medical uveitis and surgical retinal specialist at the University of Michigan’s Kellogg Eye Center. Her expertise includes inherited retinal degeneration (IRD). Dr. Abalem joined the Kellogg Eye Center in 2019 as an Assistant Professor after training at Kellogg under Drs. Thiran Jayasundera and John Heckenlively. In her role, she focuses on structural and functional endpoints for therapeutic clinical trials and patient-reported outcomes, utilizing image informatics and artificial intelligence to characterize phenotypes and predict disease progression. Additionally, Dr. Abalem contributes to the ARVO Professional Development Education Committee, co-chairing the planning committee for Big Data Career Development meetings. Before her faculty position, she was awarded a fellowship from the Foundation Fighting Blindness while at the Kellogg Eye Center. Her research has significantly contributed to the understanding of Stargardt disease and X-linked retinoschisis, and she co-invented the Michigan Retinal Degeneration Questionnaire (MRDQ), a validated patient-reported outcomes measure for IRDs.
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science