The Carolyn F. Jones Professorship of Ophthalmology II

This Professorship was established in 2022, when the value of the endowment of the Carolyn F. Jones Professorship of Ophthalmology had increased sufficiently to support a second professorship. The original Professorship was established in 1996 by the bequest of Carolyn F. Jones (1903–1993). The chair is awarded to an outstanding faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at the Scheie Eye Institute. 

Mrs. Jones was a generous supporter of hospitals, universities, and many other charities from her home in southern California, where she moved following her marriage to the lawyer Berkeley F. Jones (1903–1957) in 1950. They met during her 10-year career as Office Manager at the Stang Medical Clinic in New York City. 

Mrs. Jones, who had grown up in Roswell, NM, and graduated from business college in St. Louis, MO, enjoyed traveling the world and graciously remembered her family’s Penn connections in her will. In addition to endowing this chair, she also created a Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania Law School honoring her brother, James L. Johnson (1906–1989), a graduate of the Class of 1933. 

Current Chairholder
Jessica I.W. Morgan, PhD

Jessica I. W. Morgan, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Scheie Eye Institute in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Morgan earned her PhD in Optics from the University of Rochester for developing imaging techniques to visualize individual retinal pigment epithelial cells in the living retina.

Following the completion of her PhD, Dr. Morgan became a postdoc at Penn, where she developed protocols for measuring and quantifying rhodopsin in the living retina, to objectively assess visual cycle function. She then joined Penn’s faculty and established an independent lab that specializes in applying high-resolution retinal imaging techniques to study the structure and function of the retina at the cellular level both in health and disease.

Dr. Morgan’s current research is fully devoted to using high resolution imaging and adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy to examine the structure and function of the human visual system at the cellular level noninvasively and to translating these imaging techniques to investigate pathogenesis and treatment of retinal disease.