Mary C. Whitman

Mary Whitman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and an Ophthalmologist at Boston Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her undergraduate degree in Biochemical Sciences with honors from Harvard College and her MD and PhD in Neurobiology from Yale University. She completed clinical training in ophthalmology at Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York and pediatric ophthalmology at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Whitman is one of relatively few pediatric ophthalmologists in the US who combines clinical care with basic research. Her clinical practice includes care and surgery of pediatric and adult strabismus patients. She is also the ophthalmology expert in the Precision Medicine Service, a multidisciplinary group utilizing genetics to inform care of rare or difficult-to-diagnose disorders of the eye. Her research interests include the development of the ocular motor system, particularly on defining the molecular cues that guide ocular motor nerves to their extraocular muscle targets. She also studies the genetic causes of both rare and common forms of strabismus.

Dr. Whitman is the recipient of a K08 award. She has previously been awarded a Knights Templar Pediatric Ophthalmology Career Starter grant, a Harvard Vision Clinical Scientist Development Program Scholarship, and—most recently—the ARVO/Alcon Early Career Clinician-Scientist Award. Nationally, Dr. Whitman serves on the Genetic Eye Disease Committee of the American Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS).