Rate My Professor Margaret DeAngelis

Margaret M. DeAngelis, MS, PhD, serves as the Ira G. Ross and Elizabeth Olmsted Ross Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo. She obtained her MS in Physiology from the Medical College of Virginia in 1993 and PhD in Neuroscience from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in 1999. DeAngelis completed a fellowship in human genetics, statistics, bioinformatics, ophthalmology, and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in 2003, followed by a certificate in statistics from Rockefeller University in 2004. Her career includes positions as Instructor in Ophthalmology from 2003 to 2007 and Assistant Professor from 2007 to 2010 at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School. At University at Buffalo, she holds her current endowed chair professorship and leads extensive mentoring and teaching efforts in neuroscience, human genetics, ophthalmology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and epidemiology for undergraduates, graduate students, medical students, fellows, and junior faculty.

DeAngelis directs a translational research program employing systems-biology approaches to uncover disease mechanisms in Mendelian and complex blinding disorders, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and hypertensive retinopathy, alongside comorbid conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Funded by the NIH, foundations, and pharmaceutical industry, her work leverages genomic methods like single-cell RNA-Seq, miRNA-seq, bulk RNA-Seq, single nuclei ATAC-Seq, allele-specific expression, and bioinformatics to identify therapeutic targets. She has developed a well-characterized human donor eye bank and published the standardized phenotyping protocol for donor eyes used in biochemical and molecular studies. With over 100 publications and nearly 10,000 citations, key works include "Single-cell atlas of the transcriptome and chromatin accessibility in the human retina" (Nature Genetics, 2026), "A multi-omics atlas of the human retina at single-cell resolution" (Cell Genomics, 2023), and analyses of sex-specific AMD mechanisms. Awards include the Silver Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (2024) and Sigma Xi (2021). She chairs NIH study sections, serves on Department of Defense and foundation panels, editorial boards, and steering committees for the International AMD Genetics Consortium (NEI/NIH) and Global Eye Genetics Consortium. Recent funding encompasses a $2.2 million National Institute on Aging grant for sex-specific AMD differences, $500,000 from the Macular Degeneration Foundation (2020-2025), and multi-million-dollar awards from Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and Genentech.