Faculty and Physicians

Santa Jeremy Ono, PhD

Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives and
Deputy Provost of Emory University
Professor, Department of Ophthalmology
Research (Basic Science) Section

Santa Jeremy Ono, PhD, Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives and Deputy Provost at Emory University, also serves as professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, Emory University School of Medicine. Ono received his education at the University of Chicago, McGill and Harvard. His training in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Harvard was supported by a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship.

Dr. Ono's first academic appointment was as assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. While at Hopkins, he won the American Diabetes Association Career Development Award and the Investigator Award from the National Arthritis Foundation. In 1996, Dr. Ono was recruited to the Harvard Medical School, where he was an associate professor and on staff at the Schepens Eye Research Institute. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Program in Immunology, PI of the Harvard Program in Ocular Immunology and on the Executive Committee of the NIH Training Program in Molecular Bases of Eye Diseases.

In 2001 Dr. Ono was appointed Cumberlege Professor and then GlaxoSmithKline Chair of Biomedical Sciences at University College London and Moorfields Eye Hospital. He was head of the Department of Immunology at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and on the executive committee of the UCL Division of Infection & Immunity. At UCL, Dr. Ono also served as associate dean of students, a member of the UCL Council (the university's governing body) and its finance committee.

Dr. Ono has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Immunology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Immunology and the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

He is a recipient of the Roche Award, the Pharmacia International Award in Allergy Research and the Medal in Bronze from Osaka City University. He has delivered keynote, plenary or major lectures at the Kyoto Cornea Conference, the International Congress of Immunology (ICI), the annual meetings of ARVO and AAAAI and at numerous universities.

He has served on the Medical Research Council's Medical Advisory Board and College of Experts and the IMS and HAI study sections of the NIH. He consults widely for companies such as GSK, Cambridge Antibody Technologies plc (now part of Astra Zeneca), Johnson & Johnson, Santen Inc. and Oxagen plc. He is chief scientific officer of iCo Therapeutics Inc., of Vancouver, Canada.

Dr. Ono's principal research interests focus on transcriptional regulation in the human immune system, mechanisms of mast cell dependent inflammation on the ocular surface and the immune component of age-related macular degeneration.

Undergraduate
University of Chicago: 1980-84

Graduate School
McGill University: 1984-88

Postgraduate Training
Harvard University: 1988-92

Research Associate
Harvard University: 1991-92

Assistant Professor
Johns Hopkins University: 1992-96

Associate Professor
Harvard University: 1996-2001

Professor
Cumberlege Professor of Biomedical Science, GlaxoSmithKline Chair of Biomedical Sciences

Associate Dean of Students; Head of the Department of Immunology (Institute of Ophthalmology), University College London, University of London: 2001-2006