Wayne State University School of Medicine Professor and Director of Translational Research for the Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences Renu Kowluru, Ph.D., has been invited to join the Board of Governors of the ARVO Foundation for Eye Research.

The ARVO Foundation supports the mission of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology through travel grants, leadership development programs and early-career awards.

“ARVO Foundation is very close to my heart. Being a member of the Developing Countries Mentorship program, I have first-hand experience how this foundation continues to provide exciting opportunity for a young scientist to attend one of the best eye conferences,” Dr. Kowluru said. “I also serve on the Foundation’s Leadership Development program. To see mid-career investigators grow into leadership positions is very rewarding.”

Dr. Kowluru is also a professor in the Division of Endocrinology and a researcher at the Kresge Eye Institute.

Her two-year term will begin in the spring.

The appointment is the latest in a series of national positions in which Dr. Kowluru has been invited to serve. Last February, she was selected to serve on the American Diabetes Association’s Eye Health Interest Group Leadership Team. That June, the National Institutes of Health invited her serve on the National Eye Advisory Council. In January, she was invited to join the Restoring Vision Moonshot Initiative team of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Dr. Kowluru’s lab studies the molecular mechanism of diabetic retinopathy and the metabolic memory associated with its continued progression, focusing on the mitochondrial damage and the role of epigenetics in the pathogenesis of the blinding disease. She is the course co-coordinator of Biology of the Eye. She co-directs a course on Diabetic Retinopathy during ARVO’s annual meetings.