W. Clay Smith, Ph.D.

Clay SmithDr. Smith received his BS and MS in entomology from the University of Florida in 1986, intrigued by visual function of insects. He continued this interest in graduate school at Yale University, studying retinoid metabolism in the visual process with Prof. Timothy Goldsmith, and earning his PhD in neurobiology in 1990. After a post-doctoral fellowship with Prof. Doug Kankel at Yale University studying Drosophila genetics, he moved to the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience for a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Barbara Battelle where he studied the molecular biology of the horseshoe crab eye. He joined UF’s Department of Ophthalmology in 1993, working with Dr. Paul Hargrave on the biochemistry of photortransduction, and then developing his own program on the molecular and cellular biology of photoreceptors. He serves as the Director of the Ocular Gene Therapy Core for production of AAV to treat blinding diseases, the Director of Research for the Department of Ophthalmology, and as co-Director with Dr. Mark Sherwood for the Center for Vision Research.