Posted on February 6, 2007 at 9:10 a.m.

Birmingham, Ala., -- Russell W. Read, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), has been granted a $60,000 Physician-Scientist Award by Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB). RPB Physician-Scientist Awards support nationally recognized scientists conducting eye research at medical institutions in the United States.

Read is one of only five grant recipients nationally. The grant allows Read to pursue research avenues for which traditional funding would not be available.

Read is a nationally recognized leader in the treatment of uveitis, a potentially blinding disease that causes inflammation of the eye. Uveitis is thought to be responsible for 10-15 percent of all blindness in the United States.

RPB is the world’s leading voluntary organization supporting eye research. To date, the organization has awarded grants totaling more than $2 million to UAB. Since it was founded in 1960, RPB has channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to medical institutions throughout the United States for research into all blinding eye diseases. RPB researchers have been associated with nearly every major breakthrough in the understanding and treatment of the loss of vision across the past 40 years.