McGahan Named President of International Society for Eye Research

Chris McGahan, dean of the College of Sciences and a professor of pharmacology at NC State, has been elected president of the International Society for Eye Research (ISER). She will serve as president-elect in 2018 before taking office for a three-year term in 2019.

As president, McGahan will lead ISER’s business affairs and other activities as well as oversee appointments to committees. The society’s mission is to provide an international platform for discussion and exchange of ideas on contemporary topics in eye and vision research among its members and the broader research community.

McGahan, who was named dean of the college in November 2017, is an expert in ocular physiology and pharmacology who studies the biochemistry of the ocular lens and retina. She joined the College of Veterinary Medicine at NC State in 1983 and was head of its Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences for 14 years immediately prior to her deanship. She is an avid researcher, having been funded continuously for more than three decades by a National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant, known as an R01.

McGahan received her doctorate in pharmacology from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine at the City University of New York and did post-doctoral work at the Harkness Eye Institute at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.