Roy Beck, MD, PhD
A highlight of Kellogg’s 24th alumni weekend was the fourth annual Qais A. Farjo, MD, Memorial Lecture, endowed to honor the memory of a talented and revered alumnus who lost his battle with cancer in 2014.
This year’s lecturer was Roy Beck, MD, PhD. Dr. Beck came to U-M in 1982 as the first director of Kellogg’s neuro ophthalmology service. Between 1982 and 1986, he also served as the resident education coordinator and directed the ophthalmology inpatient consultation service.
In 1993, Dr. Beck founded the JAEB Center for Health Research in Tampa, Florida, a freestanding nonprofit center for clinical and epidemiological research in eye diseases.
In his presentation, “My Journey through Clinical Trials in Ophthalmology,” Dr. Beck highlighted a few of the significant research projects coordinated by the JAEB Center under his leadership—a body of work that has resulted in transformational advances in neuro ophthalmology, pediatric eye diseases, and diseases of the cornea and retina.
Reflecting on Dr. Beck’s remarks, Professor Jonathan Trobe, MD, summarized the lecture as “an exercise in modesty” from a leader he described as “without exaggeration, the most celebrated ophthalmic epidemiologist on the face of the earth.”