The New York Academy of Medicine has awarded its prestigious 2018 Lewis Rudin Glaucoma Prize to Val C. Sheffield, of the University of Iowa, for his groundbreaking research on glaucoma treatment.

The prize recognizes the most significant scholarly article on glaucoma published in a peer-reviewed journal in the prior calendar year. Sheffield’s winning study, “CRISPR-Cas9–based treatment of myocilin-associated glaucoma,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) in 2017.

Recipients of the Rudin Glaucoma Prize are nominated by their peers, and a winner is chosen by the New York Academy of Medicine’s Lewis Rudin Prize Selection Committee and approved by the Academy Board of Trustees. Since the prize’s inception in 1995, the committee has recognized the outstanding contributions of physicians and scientists working on the challenges of glaucoma, and the prize has become a highly respected and acknowledged award.

Sheffield is an internationally recognized leader in the field of human molecular genetics and genomics, particularly as related to inherited blinding disorders including glaucoma. He has spent his entire career at the University of Iowa, where he is currently director of the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics, professor of pediatrics and ophthalmology, the Roy J. Carver Chair in Molecular Genetics, and an investigator of the University of Iowa Institute for Vision Research.