Junko Hori MD, PhD

Dr. Junko Hori is currently a Professor of Ophthalmology at Nippon Medical School and Director of Ophthalmology at Nippon Medical School Tama-Nagayama Hospital in Tokyo. She is both an ophthalmologist and a scientist. She has been conducting the Ocular Inflammation Service in Nippon Medical School Hospital since 2004 and consultant practice centered on uveitis for 15 years. As a scientist, she received her PhD from The University of Tokyo in the study of the role of co-stimulatory molecules on corneal transplantation immunity, in 1997. She has completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Prof. J Wayne Streilein's laboratory at the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Harvard Medical School where she studied the mechanisms of ocular immune privilege from 1997 to 2000. After her return to Tokyo, she was appointed as a faculty member in Ophthalmology at Nippon Medical School. She has been conducting basic research for ocular inflammation and immunology at The Life Science Center of Nippon Medical School for the past 20 years.

Her scientific interests focus on molecular and cellar mechanisms of ocular immunology, especially "immune privilege", immune-pathogenesis and treatment of uveitis and scleritis, and ocular tissue transplantation immunity. As a clinician, her practice focuses primarily on uveitis and scleritis. She has practiced over 1500 patients of uveitis and over 400 patients of scleritis in our Ocular Inflammation Service for the past 15 years. She is a board member of the Japanese Ocular Inflammation Society. In the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), she served as an International Member Committee (2006-2009) and a Program Committee Member in the Immunology & Microbiology Section (2009-2011, chair in 2011). She is also a member of the American Uveitis Society and the International Uveitis Study Group.

She serves as a reviewer for Prog Retin Eye Res, J Immunol, Am J Transplant, IOVS, Human Immunity, etc., and as an associate editor for J Ophthalmic Inflamm Infect. She is a recipient of the Young Investigator Award of the sixth basic sciences symposium of the transplantation society in 1999, Bausch-Lomb Japan Overseas Research Fellowship Award in 1999, the Cora Verhagen Prize of ARVO in 2000, the Promising Investigator Award of the Japan Cornea Society in 2004, Promising Investigator Award of the Japanese Ocular Inflammation Society in 2006, Maruyama Memorial Award in 2006, Award of The Society of Japanese Women Scientists in 2007 as the first clinician-scientist who received the Award from The Society of Japanese Women Scientists, and ARVO Silver Fellow in 2016.