Dr. Budenz named chairman

Chapel Hill, NC-Donald L. Budenz, MD, MPH, will become chairman of the department of ophthalmology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill effective Oct. 1. He will replace Travis Meredith, MD, who is stepping down after serving as chairman of the department since 2001. Dr. Meredith will continue to work part-time as chairman emeritus and professor of ophthalmology.

Dr. Budenz is a professor at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He has also served as associate medical director of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and chair of its quality assurance committee. He specializes in cataracts and glaucoma, and his research focuses on glaucoma diagnostic testing, epidemiology, and surgical clinical trials in glaucoma.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Budenz earned his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency in ophthalmology at the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania and a glaucoma fellowship at the University of Miami. Dr. Budenz also received his Master of Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Budenz is actively engaged in global health initiatives. He travels to Ghana each year to treat patients and to train local surgeons. For the past 15 years, he has conducted several clinical trials and studied the epidemiology of blindness, visual impairment, and glaucoma in that country.