Dr. Lewis joins our Medical Advisory Board

Richard Alan Lewis, M.D., M.S., was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the elder son of two physicians. His younger brother, Harry, is Gordon MacKay Professor of Computer Sciences at Harvard University and currently Dean of Harvard College.

Dr. Lewis was graduated magna cum laude from the Roxbury Latin School (the oldest continuingly operated independent school in North America) in 1961, and from Harvard College A.B. cum laude (Biology) in 1965 . He received his medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1969 and a Master of Science in Ophthalmology from the University’s Rackham Graduate School in 1974. After serving as an Intern in the Department of Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center, he was then a Pre-Residency Fellow in Retinal Disease and a Resident in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Michigan Hospitals, where his inspirational mentor in ophthalmic genetics was Harold F. Falls M.D.. An additional year of Fellowship in Macular Diseases was split between the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and the Montefiore Hospital (George Wise M.D.) in the Bronx, New York, and the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute (J. Donald M. Gass M.D.), the University of Miami, Miami, Florida .

He then returned to the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical Center for five years and was recruited to Baylor College of Medicine in 1979, where he is now Professor of Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Medicine, and Molecular and Human Genetics and Faculty Associate at the Huffington Center on Aging. Throughout his tenure, he has been the Medical Director of Ophthalmic Diagnostic Services for the Department of Ophthalmology and a member of the Medical Staffs of the Methodist Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, the Harris County Hospital District, and the Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

Although his primary clinical practice covers retinal disease, including ocular complications of diabetes, hypertension, and the ocular manifestations of other major systemic illnesses such as AIDS, his research interests have focused on genetics and hereditary eye disease like VHL, particularly those that cause visual disabilities in infants and children.

His collaborations in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor have led successfully to the mapping and identification of more genes for hereditary eye disease than any other clinical ophthalmologist in the United States. His curriculum vitae includes more than 350 entries in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks and five named lectureships throughout the United States.

Dr. Lewis is married to Patricia N. Lewis, Ph.D., M.B.A., currently the Executive Director of the A I M Foundation, Houston, Texas. They have two children, Richard N. Lewis, a Chemical Engineering graduate of Princeton University and currently Vice President of the Capital Group, an investment firm in Los Angeles, California, and Catherine P. Lewis, also a Chemical Engineering graduate of Princeton University and currently employed at the Exxon-Mobil Research and Engineering Company in Fairfax, Virginia.