University of Iowa Health Care’s Val C. Sheffield, MD, PhD, and Edwin M. Stone, MD, PhD, are the recipients of the 2025 Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research, awarded by global brain and vision research nonprofit BrightFocus Foundation and the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education.
The two groundbreaking researchers received the prestigious award in recognition of their immense contributions to advancing vision research, which has provided real hope to millions of people at risk of losing their sight.
“Drs. Sheffield and Stone are shining examples of academic medicine at its best, where passionate researchers make breakthroughs that go on to change people’s lives,” says Denise Jamieson, MD, MPH, vice president for medical affairs and the Tyrone D. Artz Dean of the UI Carver College of Medicine. “Both faculty members have had a transformative impact on the treatment of blinding eye diseases by uncovering the genetic drivers of blinding eye diseases like macular degeneration and glaucoma. I am proud they are being recognized for their remarkable discoveries, which will continue to shape the treatment of eye diseases for decades to come.”
Sheffield, professor of pediatrics and ophthalmology and visual sciences at UI Carver College of Medicine, is best known for developing methods and improved approaches to facilitate human genetic disease gene identification. This work includes major contributions to the completion of a high-resolution polymorphic genetic map of the human genome (the first completed goal of the Human Genome Project). His work has advanced the understanding of hereditary blindness and other vision-affecting disorders like diabetes and hypertension by identifying numerous genes linked to inherited blindness—including glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, and Bardet-Biedl Syndrome. Currently, his lab is focused on developing novel therapies.
Stone is a professor of ophthalmology and director of the UI Institute for Vision Research. He is best known for his work in defining the genetic basis of blinding eye diseases—ranging from two of the most common causes of blindness, macular degeneration and glaucoma, to rarer conditions like retinitis pigmentosa and Leber congenital amaurosis. Stone has actively worked to remove the technical, legal, and financial barriers between genetic discoveries and the patients who could benefit from them. He founded the Carver Nonprofit Genetic Testing Laboratory at the UI that provides low-cost genetic tests to patients in every state of the U.S. and more than 60 other countries. He also created an open-access web-based teaching tool with thousands of downloadable full-resolution images to help physicians around the world improve their ability to diagnose Mendelian retinal diseases (www.stonerounds.org). His current research interests include the development of affordable gene-and stem cell-based treatments for all molecular forms of inherited retinal disease and the identification of new disease-causing and phenotype modifying genetic variations.
Established in 1994, the Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research recognizes excellence as demonstrated by several significant professional research contributions to vision science or for a single research contribution of exceptional importance to vision science and is chosen by an international panel of biomedical physicians and researchers. Past recipients include pioneers whose work has fundamentally advanced the field.