Won-Kyu Ju is Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Ophthalmology. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Department of Anatomy at Medical College of Catholic University in Korea in 2001, and then completed a 2 year post-doctoral position in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis studying the mechanisms of cell death and protection in retinal neurodegeneration in retinal ischemia and glaucoma. He worked at the Burnham Institute in San Diego as a senior post-doctoral associate from 2003 and as a staff scientist from 2005 studying the mechanisms of OPA1 mutation-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction in dominant optic atrophy. Dr. Ju published over 30 scientific publications. Dr. Ju is interested in the fundamental issues of whether acute or chronic intraocular pressure (IOP) induces breakdown of mitochondria network, such as mitochondrial fragmentation, and how IOP triggers mitochondrial dysfunction of retinal ganglion cell death in glaucoma. Recently, he has established a specialized pressure model to mimic pressure-induced glaucoma in vitro and has found that hydrostatic pressure induced mitochondrial fission, which may cause cell death, in differentiated retinal ganglion cell (RGC-5). He has also begun investigating mitochondrial dysfunction in mouse glaucoma in vivo model by acute or chronic IOP elevation. This work will be extremely important to determine how mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to progressive RGC degeneration and identify new potential targets for therapeutic intervention in glaucoma.