Program Overview

The history of ophthalmology in Western New York parallels the founding of the University of Buffalo’s School of Medicine in 1846.

Dr. Lucian Howe, founder of the Howe Ophthalmic Research Laboratory, came to Buffalo just prior to the Civil War and introduced the practice of modern ophthalmology to the region. Buffalo was then, and is now, the main provider of tertiary eye care to the six-county area that comprises Western New York, as well as to parts of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Southern Ontario.

At one time there were three separate training programs in Ophthalmology within the city of Buffalo. By the early 1980s all three programs had merged into a combined residency training under the auspices of the State University of New York’s School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Since that time, the department has grown steadily, continually adding full-time faculty, and expanding both its clinical and research facilities.

The primary mission of the Department of Ophthalmology is the clinical and surgical training of physicians; research & development in the field of ophthalmology; and the provision of high quality tertiary eye care to the people of Western New York.

To accomplish this goal we have assembled a core group of fellowship-trained, full-time clinical faculty and research scientists supplemented by a dedicated group of volunteer faculty. A consortium of hospitals that includes Erie County Medical Center, the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, and the Kaleida Health System (which includes Buffalo’s Women's and Children's Hospital) have formed an alliance with the State University of New York’s School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to provide state-of-the-art health care to the region’s 1.5 million people. The considerable resources of this system have been incorporated to provide an equally high-quality residency training program.