WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
My family moved to Southern California when I was 6, after my father got a position at the California Institute of Technology. He served as the Deputy Director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project, which won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017. Watching the LIGO collaboration was inspiring and showed me the incredible power of science, technology, and hard work from an early age. I attended Yale College, where I studied Biochemistry and Biophysics. After college, I spent a year in rural Borneo, Indonesia, leading a community-based project with non-profit Health in Harmony, which confirmed my desire to pursue medicine.
MY PATH TO RETINA
In my third year at Yale School of Medicine, I was considering internal medicine or psychiatry until I witnessed my first cataract surgery at the assistant's scope and never looked back. I matched for residency at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute (BPEI) and joined an incredible class of co-residents who made residency some of the best years of my life. The BPEI emergency department was my first exposure to retina; the diversity and complexity of pathology was a tremendous motivator to continue to learn.
Dr. Lazzarini's advice: Life is long, and things are always evolving. Listen to your mentors, never stop learning, and believe in yourself.
SUPPORT ALONG THE WAY
My first retina cases were with my chief residents, Jonathan F. Russell, MD, PhD, and Nathan L. Scott, MD. I can still hear their pearls in my head as I place scleral buckles and perform vitrectomy. Many of the principles that form the core of my anatomical understanding and surgical philosophy were crystalized in the late evening hours reattaching retinas and removing intraocular foreign bodies with my chiefs.
Throughout my time at BPEI, I leaned on and learned from Harry W. Flynn Jr, MD, and Audina M. Berrocal, MD. Rarely in my adult life have I felt as exposed as I often did during retinopathy of prematurity rounds with Dr. Berrocal—trading examinations with a world expert in pediatric retina was humbling and profoundly instructional. I remain grateful for her guidance and belief in me as a trainee.
I will never forget the first time I met Dr. Flynn. He told me, “Retina surgery can feel like flying a plane between buildings downtown,” before adding “retina specialists don't have time to wait.” He then bounded up the stairs, leaving me standing at the elevator landing. To this day, there are times that I wish I could lead my patient by the hand to see Dr. Flynn for a sage, same-day second opinion.
AN EXPERIENCE TO REMEMBER
Serving as chief resident at BPEI remains the most defining experience of my career. The demands of the role—directing the ocular trauma service, running a busy retina service, and teaching incredibly talented residents and fellows—forced a kind of growth that I could not have engineered any other way. The skills and instincts forged in that year are gifts I will carry for the rest of my professional life. My co-chief, Hasenin Al-khersan, MD, was the consummate partner, sounding board, and, too rarely, co-surgeon.
