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.

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.