Medical School Inaugurates the Harold F. Falls Collegiate Professorship in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences

Anand Swaroop is named the first Fall Professor

The University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center was the location for ceremonies on May 29 that marked the inauguration of the Harold F. Falls Collegiate Professorship in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and the installation of Anand Swaroop, Ph.D., as the first Falls Professor. The event was attended by, among many others, Harold Falls (M.D. 1936, Residency 1939) and members of his family, and by Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Eye Institute and a member of the department’s faculty.

Swaroop earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore in 1982 and spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biophysics, biochemistry and human genetics at Yale University before joining the U-M faculty in 1990. He is a professor in both the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and the Department of Human Genetics, as well as a faculty member in the graduate programs in neuroscience and cell and molecular biology. He directs the Sensory Gene Microarray Node at the Kellogg Eye Center and heads the U-M Center for Retinal and Macular Degeneration.

Internationally recognized as a premier researcher in retinal diseases and retinal gene regulation, Swaroop was one of the first vision scientists in the country to receive funding from the National Eye Institute to establish a microarray facility, which supplements genetic eye research at Michigan. He also initiated a major program in age-related macular degeneration to identify genes that predispose elderly individuals to this devastating blinding disease. Swaroop, like Harold Falls before him, serves as mentor to a growing group of future genetic scholars. In addition to a number of postdoctoral, graduate and medical students, almost 50 undergraduate students have conducted research projects in his laboratory during the last dozen years.

Harold Falls is a founder of medical genetics in North America and was the undisputed master of clinical genetics in ophthalmology for nearly half a century. In 1941, Falls helped establish, and then direct, the first heredity clinic in the nation; the clinic evolved into the Medical School’s Department of Human Genetics. During his long association with the U-M, Falls was responsible for describing a rich collection of ophthalmic genetic
histories that are still being studied today. A visionary who saw the importance of genetics long before most others did, he was beloved by the medical students, residents and fellows who had the good fortune to study under him. One of his residents described Falls as “a devoted teacher, a diligent observer, a superb diagnostician, a superior parliamentarian and a humane physician.”

Falls set precedents unimaginable for the time. He made major contributions to the description and detection of Cooley’s anemia, X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, juvenile retinoschisis, retinoblastoma, ocular albinism, blue cone monochromacy, and the Indiana form of amyloidosis.

Paul R. Lichter (M.D. 1964, Residency 1968), chair of the department and Kellogg’s director, notes that Swaroop is a natural choice for the Falls Collegiate Professorship. “He has gained wide recognition for his genetic studies of the retina…I am pleased that Dr. Swaroop will hold a professorship named for a Michigan faculty member who had profound insights into medical genetics well ahead of his peers in any medical field.”