Sheila Nirenberg

Bionic Sight is a company founded by Dr. Sheila Nirenberg that is working on developing prosthetic sensory devices to treat blindness. Dr. Nirenberg and Cornell developed technology comprised of methods and devices to treat retinal degenerative diseases by translating images into signals that the brain can understand. The intellectual property includes gene therapy administered to a patient's eyes so that certain cells (retinal ganglion cells, that feed the optic nerve) express a light sensitive-protein; and (ii) the patient wears a device consisting of glasses and an attached wearable computer on the outside surface of each lens in the glasses is a camera; digital images from the camera are sent to the computer and are processed by software that converts the images into a series of signals that the brain can understand; the computer sends that signal back out to the glasses; on the inside of each of the glasses' lenses is an array of micro-light sources that is activated by the computer, to send beams of light into the eye, activating the right cells at the right time, such that the cells send the appropriate signal to the brain, and the subject sees as though the subject had an intact retina. The base of the invention is the software, which functions as a "virtual retina". The Weill Cornell Medicine Conflicts Advisory Panel determined that since Dr. Nirenberg has equity in Bionic Sight and serves as a consultant to the company this creates a financial conflict of interest with Dr. Nirenberg’s NIH grant which has the objective to address a set of hypotheses about retinal processing and to advance the development of a retinal prosthetic for treating blindness.