Atalie Carina Thompson, MD, MPH

I am a board-certified and fellowship-trained glaucoma specialist with training in the medical and surgical treatment of glaucoma, cataracts, and comprehensive ophthalmology. I chose to become a glaucoma specialist because I enjoy getting to know my patients and being able to take care of them over many years of longitudinal follow-up. In clinical decision-making, I take a patient-centered and evidence-based approach, and partner with my patients in order to help them to make the best possible decision for the management of their eye disease. I am grateful to be in an academic environment where I also have the opportunity to teach residents and medical students, and interact with excellent colleagues across a university health system.

In addition to my clinical and teaching duties, I am a clinician-scientist with active research interests studying imaging and visual function in age-related diseases such as glaucoma, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s Disease, and investigating the development and implementation of artificial intelligence for detection of neurodegenerative diseases of the eye and brain. In addition, I have a long-standing commitment to improving healthcare disparities, and am interested in the deployment of novel technologies through teleophthalmology to improve access to care.

I completed my undergraduate degree at Harvard College. During my medical training at Stanford Medical School, I received a fellowship to complete an Interdisciplinary Master’s Degree in Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. I went on to train in ophthalmology at Duke Eye Center and subsequently received a prestigious Heed Fellowship for research during my glaucoma fellowship at Duke. I was granted funding through a K23 NIH/NEI award and American Glaucoma Society grant during my first year on faculty at Duke.

I subsequently joined Wake Forest Baptist Health Department of Surgical Ophthalmology where I am Vice Chair of Learning Health Systems. I also am a Pepper Scholar, with a co-appointment in Gerontology and Geriatrics and membership in the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation which provides rich opportunities for cross-collaboration with other scientists interested in studying age-related diseases.