Rising Star: Introducing Elizabeth Akinsoji, MD, MPH

A little girl’s dream of curing blindness was inspired by her grandmother’s severe glaucoma, so severe in fact that the matriarch experienced only darkness. This early realization carved a definitive path straightforward.

The learning path

Elizabeth Akinsoji, MD, was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and at age 6 years, learned that her grandmother, who lived in Abeokuta, Nigeria, had no light perception vision. This prompted Elizabeth to want to learn about how vision works. By 11 years, she had uncovered enough interesting facts about the visual process, such as the upside-down visual images that are later flipped by the brain, to decide on a career in vision, be it ophthalmology or optometry.

She also found that her undergraduate premed work at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore led to a love of public health. “Public health enables a lot of people to be positively impacted at the same time,” she commented.

The joint MD/MPH program at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, in Miami, was a perfect fit for her life view. During the third year, she was able to expand her research experience, and because of an opening in neurology, an opportunity presented that allowed her to work in the epilepsy department at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Eye Institute with mentor William Theodore, MD. The research involved studying a link between the HHV-6 virus and epilepsy.¹

Her first post-graduate year involved a neurology residency at Emory University in Atlanta, where she connected with Valerie Biousse, MD, and Nancy Newman, MD, 2 giants in neuro-ophthalmology.

During this time, because of the work done with specific patients, she pinpointed her interest to the visual pathways. “This is what I loved most about ophthalmology and neurology in contrast to the workings of the lens and the cornea. I was fascinated by the optic nerve, the chiasm, the connection to the brain, and how the brain processes vision. Neuro-ophthalmology ties together ophthalmology and neurology,” she explained, bringing her to her current position as a clinical neuro-ophthalmology fellow at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, in Boston.

Her next chapter begins in September 2026 as a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute as a neuro-ophthalmologist.

Research highlights

Optic nerve regeneration

A major focus for her while at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute was optic nerve regeneration.²

She and her colleagues wanted to identify how changes in retinal structure and function correlate with visual deficits during increasing amounts of retinal degeneration in adult mice after subretinal injections of paraquat. They found that the “photoreceptor layer structure, function, and visual behavior declined at a linear rate over time following paraquat-induced degeneration, with the correlations between outcome measures being lowest at mild injury levels and increasing with injury severity. Overall reductions in visual acuity were highly correlated with declines in retinal thickness (r²=0.78) and function (r²=0.67) and retinal thickness correlated with photoreceptor function (r²=0.72).”

They concluded that the study provided “new insight about the relative kinetics of measurements of retinal degeneration induced by oxidative stress, which could guide the choice of optimal outcome measurements for other retinal diseases.”

Neuro-ophthalmology departmental track

A project that she considers to be very important began during her residency, ie, the establishment of a track for those in neuro-ophthalmology. “Neuro-ophthalmology seemed to be an enigma because what these physicians did was not always clear,” Akinsoji said.

The departmental track in Emory’s adult neurology program would include the availability of more neuro-ophthalmology-related courses. She explained that at Emory, 4 weeks was the only requirement. While this was more than in most neurology residency programs, she believed it was insufficient.

She proposed, “A resident could potentially take 12 weeks of neuro-ophthalmology and rotate through different ophthalmology subspecialties, ie, comprehensive, glaucoma, etc., to achieve a good base of ophthalmic knowledge. This would also include neuro-ophthalmology subspecialties, for example, neuro-muscular, neuro-oncology, and neuro-immunology. This track would embody the elements that would make a well-balanced, neurology-trained neuro-ophthalmology fellow.”

This level of training would provide the technical skills needed when physicians become fellows.

EyeSpy Consults

This is an interactive app-based guide that helps trainees think through neuro-ophthalmology consults in a step-by-step way that builds both confidence and clinical reasoning.^3,4

She created this app in partnership with John Payne, BS, a cloud engineer with experience in app development, to facilitate the technical aspects, and Nurhan Torun, MD, chief of the division of ophthalmology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, her faculty sponsor.

By strengthening foundational knowledge and clinical reasoning, the tool aims to enhance consult quality by helping trainees ask better questions, focus their examinations, and recognize when a neuro-ophthalmic issue truly warrants subspecialty input.

The target study population will include neurology and ophthalmology residents who will use and evaluate the program.

She explained that the app will include three main entry points: by symptom, by suspected diagnosis, or by exam finding. Under “symptoms,” users can start with common presentations such as vision loss, diplopia, ptosis, or anisocoria. For example, selecting vision loss will branch into transient versus persistent, then unilateral versus bilateral. From there, it will walk the user through the key questions to ask and explain why those questions matter. Each branch will also include “do-not-miss” prompts to highlight details that separate urgent from non-urgent cases.³

If there is a suspected diagnosis, the user can move to sections on, optic neuritis, giant cell arteritis, myasthenia gravis, central retinal artery occlusion, Graves orbitopathy, and non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. Brief summaries, recommended testing, and management pearls are included for each.³

The examination findings will cover key ocular signs such as optic disc edema and anisocoria and provide structured guidance on interpretation and approaching these findings during a consult.³

Akinsoji hopes that this app, which is iPhone-based, will aid physicians during neuro-ophthalmic consults and make the experience less scary.

Through her work, she emphasizes to ophthalmologists and optometrists the importance of medical education. “It is important to incorporate complex information into a digestible format. This applies to trainees and patients. In addition, making neuro-ophthalmology more visible as a career, especially for neurology and ophthalmology residents, and showing them a pathway that is accessible,” she commented.

On the personal side

Akinsoji also has been involved in pageantry and was named Miss Black Maryland USA 2019-2020. Equity, visibility, and diversity are equally important to her.

In her role as 2019-2020 Miss Black Maryland USA, she served as ambassador for the American Heart Association and led community speaking engagements on heart health across Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. In addition, she hosted a 6-week virtual mental health series focused on youth suicide prevention and bullying awareness and created an essay scholarship for rising senior medical students at the University of Miami to recognize the impact of the physician workforce.

References

1. Akinsoji EO, Theodore WH. HHV-6 and hippocampal volume in patients with mesial temporal sclerosis. Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2020;7:1644-52.

2. Patel AK, Akinsoji EO,Hackam AS. Defining the relationships among retinal function, layer thickness and visual behavior during oxidative stress-induced retinal degeneration. Curr Eye Res. 2016;41:977-86.

3. Akinsoji E. EyeSpy Consults: A decision-support app to improve neuro-ophthalmology consult confidence. Ophthalmology Times. 2026; published online May 19. https://www.ophthalmologytimes.com/view/eyespy-consults-a-decision-support-app-to-improve-neuro-ophthalmology-consult-confidence

4. Akinsoji E, Torun N. EyeSpy Consults: a neuro-ophthalmology survival app to guide trainee approach to common consults. North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society poster presentation. 2026; March 20-24.