- Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University
Dr. Brian Hafler is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Science at Yale School of Medicine. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, earned his MD/PhD from Harvard Medical School, and completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-funded postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Connie Cepko at Harvard. He completed his ophthalmology residency at Yale School of Medicine/Yale-New Haven Hospital and a retina fellowship at Massachusetts Eye and Ear as a Heed Fellow, specializing in inherited retinal degenerations. He subsequently joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, serving on the Retina Service and in the Emergency and Trauma Eye Care Department at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, before joining Yale.
Dr. Hafler’s research focuses on macular degeneration and glaucoma, using single-cell transcriptomics to identify novel therapeutic approaches. His laboratory recently generated the first single-cell human retinal transcriptomic atlas and identified the cell types driving macular degeneration — a significant advance in understanding this blinding disease.
Dr. Hafler is the recipient of a K08 Clinical Scientist Development Award from the NIH, the American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician Scientist Award, and the Thome Memorial Foundation Award for AMD Research. He has also been named the William R. Orthwein, Jr. ’38 Yale Scholar.