Emory University School of Medicine has appointed Allen D. Beck, MD, as Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Director of the Emory Eye Center, effective May 1, 2019. Beck has been serving as interim chair and interim director since March 2016. During that time he has directed the expansion of the department with the addition of nine ophthalmologists and seven optometrists, a new clinic space at Emory Johns Creek Hospital, and the acquisition of several key research grants, including two new NIH grants in 2019 totaling $4.5 million for research related to Ebola virus disease survivors.

Beck graduated from Emory School of Medicine in 1989. Following a one-year transitional internship at Georgia Baptist Medical Center (now Atlanta Medical Center), he returned to Emory for his ophthalmology residency and fellowship in glaucoma. He joined the Emory School of Medicine and Emory Eye Center faculty in 1994 after completing his fellowship.

Since that time Beck has established a thriving medical practice focusing on diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma in adults and children. He became the Emory glaucoma section director in 1999 and the William and Clara Redmond Professor of Ophthalmology in 2006. Beck is well-known and respected among his peers, as seen by his inclusion in Atlanta magazine’s Top Doctors issue every year since 2009. He joined the Emory Millipub Club in 2017 and received the Emory Healthcare Provider Excellence Award in 2017.

Beck has published extensively on childhood glaucoma diagnosis and management and serves as the medical monitor for the National Eye Institute (NEI)-sponsored, Infant Aphakia Treatment Study (IATS), headed by Scott Lambert, MD, at Stanford University. He has served as a principal investigator in glaucoma clinical trials, including the NEI-sponsored Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study (AGIS) and the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS). He has a strong interest in glaucoma medication research, as well as factors that influence adherence, and participated as a co-investigator and principal investigator in the Emory based, NEI - funded, Interactive Study to Increase Glaucoma adHerence to Treatment (I-SIGHT).

He also serves as a member of the executive committee for the Childhood Glaucoma Research Network and has served on the steering committee for the Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Study (AGIS), the American Glaucoma Society Patient Care Committee and Practice Guidelines Subcommittee, and on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus(JAAPOS).