Biography
M. Elizabeth Fini, Ph.D.

Dr. Fini serves as scientific director of the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Vision Research Center, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Appointed in 2002, she has been interacting closely with Bascom Palmer's chairman to build a research program of world class caliber, integrating basic science investigation with clinical research. This is being accomplished in concert with research development at the university as a whole.

Dr. Fini is a tenured professor of ophthalmology and holds the Walter G. Ross Chair in Ophthalmic Research. A molecular cell biologist, she is interested in mechanisms of tissue injury, repair and regeneration, especially with respect to the eye and its diseases, with a focus on matrix metalloproteinases.

A native of Boston, Dr. Fini earned her doctoral degree at Dartmouth College and did post-doctoral training at Dartmouth Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She began to apply her basic science training to the eye when she accepted her first faculty position in the ophthalmology department of Harvard Medical School and the Schepens Eye Research Institute. Within a few years she transferred to the dermatology department and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in order to join the new MGH/Harvard/Shiseido Cutaneous Biology Research Center. From there she was recruited to the New England Eye Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, where she was appointed as the Jules and Doris Stein Research to Prevent Blindness Professor. She rose to director of research, and founded the Tufts Center for Vision Research, an umbrella organization drawing together all eye and vision researchers on campus. She moved to the University of Miami in 2002 because of the unusual opportunity to build a larger research program.

Dr. Fini has served on numerous national and federal advisory panels, most recently the National Eye Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors. She has also served on (or chaired) many national and international committees, and is currently a member of the Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society’s advisory board and a nominee for trustee of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. She is currently on the editorial boards for Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, the Journal of Cutaneous and Ocular Toxicology, and the Journal of Cellular Physiology.

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