The UNMC campus is invited to a retirement reception for Wallace Thoreson, PhD, the Gilmore Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in the UNMC Department of Ophthalmology.
The event will be Wednesday, June 24, from 3 to 5 pm at the Wigton Heritage Center.
Dr. Thoreson, who will retire June 30, 2026, joined UNMC on March 1, 1993. In addition to holding vice chair and research director roles in ophthalmology, he also holds the titles of professor of pharmacology and experimental neuroscience at UNMC and professor of biology at University of Nebraska at Omaha.
“Over more than 30 years at UNMC, Dr. Wally Thoreson not only served as our department’s vice chair of research, he has become a respected institutional leader, whose faculty service extends beyond departmental boundaries to include chair of promotion and tenure and other leadership roles,” said Ronald Krueger, MD, chair of ophthalmology and visual sciences. “His scientific integrity and thoughtful wisdom have gained him the trust of colleagues across the medical center.”
During his 33-year career, Dr. Thoreson has been honored with many research and teaching awards, including:
- The Research Leadership Award
- The Distinguished Scientist Award
- The Joseph P. Gilmore Outstanding Investigator Award
- The Outstanding Mentor of Graduate Students Award
UNMC College of Medicine Dean Bradley Britigan, MD, pointed to Dr. Thoreson’s work on the college’s promotion and tenure committee as an example of his impact on the college.
“Dr. Thoreson not only shone as a research leader and educator, but as a colleague,” Dr. Britigan said. “His efforts to help guide his fellow faculty members through the promotion and tenure process, including the workshops he would hold with Dr. Teri Mauch, show Dr. Thoreson, again, as a person dedicated to lifting up those around him.”
As one of the inaugural winners of the UNMC Research Leadership Award in 2014, Dr. Thoreson said he work included therapies for retinal disease, but his focus was on “the fundamental question of how visual information collected by rod and cone photoreceptors is converted into a neural code for transmission to the brain and how this process shapes what we see.”
Dr. Thoreson will receive emeritus status and with research funding that extends beyond his retirement date he plans to spend some time in the laboratory completing ongoing projects. Friends also expect Dr. Thoreson to spend a lot of his new free time in the garden. Dr. Thoreson is one of the original members of the Dundee Community Garden. Last year, the garden donated more than 500 pounds of sweet potatoes along with other vegetables to residents of a nearby Omaha Housing Authority apartment complex. Finally, Dr. Thoreson said, “I look forward to more time with my grandchildren.”