Dear colleagues,
I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Mary K. Daly, M.D. to be the new chair of the Department of Ophthalmology, effective April 1, 2024.
Dr. Daly served as Chief of Ophthalmology at VA Boston Healthcare System from 2005-2022. During that time, she championed transformative and expansive changes which improved the continuity and quality of care, enhanced the educational curriculum for over 200 residents, expanded the number of clinical fellows, established new research initiatives, and instituted a full-time research fellowship program. In February, 2022, she joined the Veterans Integrated Systems Network 23 (VISN 23) Technology Based Eye Care Services Program (TECS), where she serves as co-chair of the VISN 23 TECS Community for Innovation in Vision Care workgroup. The program is at the cutting edge of technology-based medical applications and aims to increase veterans’ access to state-of-the art vision care through a virtual delivery model.
Dr. Daly spearheaded the first cataract and vitreoretinal surgical simulation lab in the VA system and was a clinical champion of the VA’s Ophthalmic Surgical Outcomes Data Pilot Program. Her research in virtual reality training and ophthalmic surgical outcomes align with her clinical initiatives to establish outcomes-based programs for training, comparative assessment, enhancement of quality of care, and ultimately, toward the elimination of avoidable blindness.
Her track record of fostering a strong ethical culture through leadership is long standing. She served for many years on the Veterans Affairs Boston Integrated Ethics Committee, and is currently a Fellow in Bioethics and a Research Fellow in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She was the 115th President of the New England Ophthalmological Society (NEOS), one of the oldest continually meeting subspeciality societies in the country.
Dr. Daly graduated Harvard College and earned her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her ophthalmology residency at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins and fellowship training in cornea and external eye diseases at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
She has served as an examiner for the American Board of Ophthalmology, as a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Basic and Clinical Science Course (BCSC) External Disease and Cornea Section Committee, and is currently an editor for the Cornea/External Eye Disease Section of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Eyewiki (online eye encyclopedia). She is currently an associate professor at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.
Dr. Daly is as excited to join our School of Medicine team as we are to have her. “VCU is a remarkable place with incredibly talented people all driven to enhance the lives of each and every patient,” Dr. Daly said. “We have an opportunity to grow its strong foundation in ophthalmology and make seminal and longstanding contributions to vision-related patient care, research, and education. I am honored and humbled to join the VCU ophthalmology team, and cannot wait to get started.”
I’d like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to Dr. Vikram Brar for serving as interim chair of the Department of Ophthalmology since April, 2022 and for participating on the search committee. I’d also like to thank the other members of the search committee, with special recognition for Dr. Douglas W. Arthur and Dr. Alice A. Coombs for serving as committee co-chairs.
Kind regards,
Arturo P. Saavedra, M.D., Ph.D.
Dean, VCU School of Medicine
Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, VCU Health System