Congratulations to Our GMS Distinguished Alumni Award Winner, Dr. Vladimir Kefalov (GMS ’99)!
Vladimir Kefalov, PhD (GMS ’99), currently serves as a professor of ophthalmology, and of physiology & biophysics, at the University of California Irvine, holding the Allergan Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology and serving as Vice Chair for Research in Ophthalmology.
He is recognized worldwide as one of the top electrophysiologists in vision research and has received awards from Research to Prevent Blindness, the Alcon Research Institute. Most recently, he was selected as the recipient of the prestigious Bressler Prize in Vision Research from the Lighthouse Guild. Dr. Kefalov and his colleagues have produced over 100 publications in journals such as Nature, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, Current Biology, PNAS and eLIFE. His research has been funded over by 13 NIH and seven foundation grants.
Dr. Kefalov earned his PhD in Cellular Biophysics from Boston University in 1999, where he worked in the lab of M. Carter Cornwall, PhD, professor emeritus of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics. We spoke to Dr. Kefalov about his time at BU, his career since then, and his work in the field of vision research. Learn more below!
Can you tell me a bit about your background and what brought you to Boston University?
I’m originally from Bulgaria. I was doing my undergraduate studies there in physics and working in a visual psychophysics lab, which was fascinating to me. I realized, especially as a physicist, that the interpretation and the science was a little too abstract. While I was fascinated by vision and neuroscience, which was a relatively new field at the time, I was eager to get into more rigorous, experimental approaches.
This is when I discovered an interdisciplinary program at Boston University, which was called Cellular Biophysics. It was a very interesting program for me, because it combined physics, biology, and physiology. So, I applied to that program, because the director of the program at the time, Dr. Carter Cornwall, was studying the physiology of photoreceptor cells. The starting point of the visual process is in those cells that detect light and convert it into an electric signal. I was really excited to learn and train with him to start my professional path in vision research.
The program was great, and I really enjoyed it. It was very course-heavy, so I spent the first year with the physics graduate students, taking all the physics graduate courses and passing the qualifying exam, which was really tough. In the second year, I transitioned to the biology department and took molecular biology, biochemistry, and cell biology, which was, again, a lot of coursework. Then, in the third year, I moved to the Medical Campus, and I took a few more courses there in biophysics.
In the meantime, I also started working in Dr. Cornwall’s lab, learning about the experimental tools, and eventually starting to do my own experiments. It was a wonderful program. I was the only student in the program at the time. I was very excited and very grateful to be part of the program and to work with Dr. Cornwall.
After you graduated from BU, where did you go?
After getting my PhD from BU, I moved on and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. I worked in the neuroscience department with one of the leaders in the field of visual neuroscience, Dr. King-Wai Yau. I did a long, six-year postdoc there, and then at the end of that period, I moved on in 2005 and opened my own lab at Washington University in St. Louis. I had a lab there for 17 years. Then, I moved on to University of California, Irvine, where I am at the moment. My lab is located in the ophthalmology department, and I’ve taken up a little bit more administrative duties as well. It’s been a great ride, and again, I owe a lot to BU and to Dr. Cornwall for getting me going and starting me on a very exciting career path.
What inspired you to enter the field of vision science and ophthalmology?
When I was an undergraduate student, I was studying solid-state physics. I realized that I was more excited about studying biological matter than solid-state crystals and things like that. So, I started exploring, and I was very fortunate to find a job as a technician in the Institute of Physiology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. I was working in a visual psychophysics lab, and this is really what started my interest in vision. I started reading books. I was not really formally trained in any biological courses at the time, but I requested from my university to be allowed to take courses in another school. I took molecular biology, and I really loved it. This is what started me on this path. Moving on and starting to work in Dr. Cornwall’s lab at BU solidified my interest, and I’ve stayed in this field ever since.
What is the significance of the work you do?
Vision, of course, is the most important of our senses. I think we get about 70% of the information about the world through our eyes. It’s a very interesting process from a basic scientific point of view. There are so many fascinating reactions. The photoreceptor cells are just unbelievable.
For instance, our rod photoreceptors, which we use to see in dim light, are able to detect a single photon of light. This is as sensitive as you can design a detector. There is nothing more sensitive than that. On the flip side, of course, vision is also very important from a clinical and from a therapeutic point of view, because the loss of vision is a major problem for many, many people. Millions of people lose their sight because of genetic deficiencies or age-related diseases, like age-related macular degeneration. So, there is a lot of interest. We have done some work on understanding human blinding disorders, and of course, developing therapies and treatments for either preventing the loss of vision or restoring vision in people. There is a lot of clinical relevance to what we do, but it’s also just a fascinating biological system to study.
When you think about your career and your research, is there one accomplishment or discovery that you’re particularly proud of when you look back?
We’ve done a lot of work. For instance, we discovered a very interesting mechanism in our cone photoreceptors, the cells that we use to see during the day, to perceive colors, and also for our acute fine resolution vision, which we use to read and recognize people. We discovered a mechanism that enables those cells to remain functional in bright light through support from Müller glial cells in the retina, which was not known until then. So, the dogma in the textbooks was that the visual chromophore, which is the light-sensing molecule, is only supplied through an adjacent layer called the retinal pigmented epithelium. What we found was that there is a second mechanism specifically for cone photoreceptors, again, specific for daytime vision, which involves these glial cells within the retina itself. We were able to demonstrate through a series of studies that those glial cells play a very important role in maintaining the ability of cone photoreceptors to function in bright light, and also to recover from bright light exposure very rapidly.
So, we’re still working on this pathway. We’re trying to understand the molecular mechanism, the enzymes and the proteins involved in the production of the visual chromophore there, and of course, also to understand its clinical relevance. I think that’s probably one of the most exciting discoveries or studies that we have been a part of.
What do you enjoy most about working with young scientists and students?
I think one of the best parts of being a scientist is that you tend to work with, first of all, very smart and intelligent people, but also with many young people and students. It’s been really gratifying to see people that have trained in my lab become independent. So, I have several people who were either students or postdocs in my lab who now have their own labs and are doing great. It’s kind of like seeing your children grow up and become independent and find their own way in life.
This is a wonderful thing to see, and coming back to BU, I’ve learned a lot from my mentor, Carter Cornwall. He has been just a phenomenal teacher, a friend, and a father figure for me. I learned a lot from him about mentoring students, about life, a work-life balance, about treating people, about professional conduct, and about science, of course. He has made just an unbelievable impact on my career and on my personal life. I have tried to pass it forward and emulate what I have learned from him with my own trainees as well.
What does it mean to have received the GMS Distinguished Alumni Award?
I was very surprised, really honored, of course, and flattered by this award. BU really launched my professional career, and I had a fantastic time there. I really enjoyed living in Boston. I thought the program was phenomenal. I owe a lot to BU and to my mentors and teachers there. It is a fantastic award to receive, and I’m really, really humbled and honored that, somebody paid attention and tracked my career after all these years. It’s been about 26 years since I graduated from BU.
On a bit lighter side, my wife also went to BU. She has a master’s degree from the School of Communication. We were graduating in the same year, and through oversight, she booked a trip for us to New Orleans, which turned out to be at the time of graduation, so we never got to do the official graduation. It’s kind of nice to be able to go back now and have an official verification that I did graduate, and to participate in a more official function related to my graduation.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I was very honored to be invited to be the keynote speaker at the [Pharmacology, Physiology & Biophysics] departmental retreat this past January. When I was there, it was the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. I was really impressed to see how much the department has grown and to see so many students. I saw many presentations from the students, I talked to many of the students, saw the posters, and I even saw some of my old teachers, which was really nice. I was very, very impressed by the growth of the department. It seems like it’s been doing really great.