Alumni Profiles Series: Ninita Brown

Dr. Ninita Brown is an ophthalmologist at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia. She completed her M.D./Ph.D. at Duke University in 2009, where she specialized in biomedical imaging devices and techniques. Today, she focuses on glaucoma and cataract care, prioritizing patient trust, effective communication, and equitable access to improve outcomes in the communities she serves.

What did your academic career path look like, and what pivots did you make along the way?

I started as a math major because I wanted to graduate in three years so I could go onto medical school a year earlier. In my first year at Spelman, I learned that almost everyone who was a math major was also in engineering. They had scholarships and a lot of support for the dual degree at Georgia Tech. I quickly pivoted to dual degree, majoring in electrical engineering. In retrospect, I would call it peer pressure.

I started medical school in California, and I loved it. Initially I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician, but I really missed research. I applied to graduate school while I was in medical school at UCLA, transferred to Duke, and stayed to complete the M.D./Ph.D.

My Ph.D. research was in electrophysiology with Dr. Patrick Wolf and Dr. Dan Gauthier. At the time, I thought I would be a pediatric cardiologist. I was shadowing Dr. Brenda Armstrong and really was inspired by her. After finishing graduate school, I did a postdoc with Dr. Joseph Izatt. He was collaborating with Dr. Cynthia Toth on a project imaging the eye.  This was my first exposure to ophthalmology, and I really enjoyed shadowing in surgery, being in clinic, and collaborating on the research projects.

I had always said that “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up." From the outside it looks like it was all a plan, but it was definitely not a plan. It just unfolded. Having great mentorship is key.

How did you discover your passion for ophthalmology?

One thing I realized when I finally got into the hospital was that I did not enjoy being in the hospital. I was a good medical student, but I couldn’t picture myself doing hospital rounds for the rest of my life. I really enjoyed surgery and clinic. I could do surgery all day.

As an engineer, I was excited about building things and learning the technology. And ophthalmology gave me that in full force: surgery and the continuity of care with the clinic. Even this morning, years later, I performed surgery and was still excited about it.

I wore glasses as a kid and always went to the ophthalmologist. I had LASIK when I was in medical school, so I’d always been fascinated by the eye. But it wasn’t until my year with Dr. Toth that everything clicked. We were building devices, imaging in the clinic, and working with Dr. Izatt. That was an incredible team. Dr. Izatt spoke “engineering”; Dr. Toth spoke “patient care.” They were able to do all these cool things together!

During that year, I helped develop early versions of a handheld OCT [optical coherence tomography] for imaging premature infants. I also imaged pathologic eyes with spectral-domain OCT and correlated the images with histology to understand what we were really seeing.

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Ophthalmology has made incredible technological advances recently. What do you think is next?

A lot of areas of ophthalmology have been strongly influenced by engineering. For example, OCT is everywhere now. We get OCT images on everybody. Just twenty years later [since the first in-human OCT images], and OCT has become a standard of care. We can follow patients over time, see nerve loss.  We can now image diabetic changes with recent advancements in OCT angiography. OCT has made its way into every part of ophthalmology, both in the clinic and the operating room.

The thing I love now and cannot live without is AI. I have an AI scribe: I talk into my phone, and it creates my notes. It can even pick up the social determinants of health as it listens to my conversations with patients. I’m a cheerleader for using AI in patient care. We’re still at the baby stage of what AI can do. For example, if I could hire AI for one job, it would be to predict who is going to go blind by detecting disease earlier. If we could get images sooner and send them through AI, we could intervene earlier and prevent blindness.

The second big space I see AI being utilized in is surgical outcome data. Now we have all these different devices—stents, hooks, and tubes—used in glaucoma surgery. AI could process the large amounts of surgical data and help us make better decisions and definitely have more individualized care. 

I think robotic surgery will be extremely useful because there are not enough surgeons, especially in underserved communities. Some cataracts I see here are worse than those I saw abroad in Haiti and Ethiopia. Robots could reduce error and expand access, but we need a balance. Not everyone will have access to this technology. We need surgeons who can operate with and without robots. New surgeons who train only with advanced technology may struggle in places without it. There is no perfect answer, but it is a very exciting time to be in global ophthalmology.

What advice do you have for current students and trainees?

My advice is twofold. First, find your flow. Flow is when you’re so engaged that you lose track of time. My first experience of that was in surgery as a college student. I was given the opportunity to help prepare a patient before neurosurgery. Afterwards, I was supposed to go home, but I wanted to see the whole thing. I didn’t want to leave. Whatever you pursue, let it be something you delight in and lose track of time.

Second, choose something that helps other people. Purpose is what gets you through the hard parts, because it is often challenging being a graduate student. It is challenging being a resident. Now, when I do cataract surgery and a patient touches my arm and says, “I can see,” that’s it. That’s my purpose. The training is long, stressful, and exhausting. Sometimes your project doesn’t work, you have all these critics, and you feel overwhelmed. But if you know your work is part of a bigger purpose, it re-centers you. You see how you fit into the puzzle. And remember to take breaks—go sit on a beach and chill with your family and friends. That’s important too.

Author

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Morgan McCloud

Ph.D. candidate, Biomedical Engineering

Morgan McCloud is a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Duke University researching robotic ocular imaging, advised by Dr. Roarke Horstmeyer and the late Dr. Joseph Izatt. With dual B.S. degrees in electrical & computer engineering and biomedical engineering, she develops advanced robotic ophthalmic imaging systems, including automated OCT and slit-lamp devices. She is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and leads engineering education and outreach initiatives at Duke.