Our Team – Seiler Lab

Dr. Magdalene J. Seiler, PhD

Associate Professor in Residence

Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, and Anatomy & Neurobiology

Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center

University of California, Irvine

Email: mseiler@uci.edu
Tel. (949)824-2037
Fax (949)824-0264

Mourning the loss of Dr. Robert B. Aramant, PhD, ARVO Silver Fellow (FARVO)

Dr. Robert Aramant passed away in the night of May 31, two months shy of his 90th birthday.

He was a great scientist and colleague; and also a family man.

Robert was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He had a deep admiration of nature and at one time wanted to become a forest warden. He was an avid birder, prolific photographer, and constant tinkerer & handyman. In his last years his favorite spot was by the bay window of his beloved Bluebird Hill Farm in rural Kentucky.

Robert came to science relatively late. After receiving his Ph.D. in his late 40s, his research career took him to France, Canada, and throughout the US. In 1986, he met me (Magdalene Seiler) at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem NC, where we started our work in retinal transplantation together. He has continued to work with me in Boston, Louisville KY, Los Angeles and Irvine; and remained a life-long friend.

Robert was very passionate about his research. His dream was to restore the gift of sight to people by reversing retinal degeneration through transplantation of retinal sheets. Among his many accomplishments were inventing and producing instruments and techniques for use in his research. His career included a decade at University of Louisville where he filed four patents for his inventions; and participated in a phase I/II clinical trial in collaboration with Dr. Norman Radtke (IND in 1999) to transplant immature retinal sheets with its retinal pigment epithelium to patients with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. He received the Humboldt-Prize for Senior U.S. Scientists (The German Humboldt-Foundation) in 1993, and the ARVO Silver fellow award in 2009.

He will be greatly missed.