Carol Mason

Carol Ann Mason is a Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. She studies axon guidance in visual pathways in an effort to restore vision to the blind. Her research focuses on the retinal ganglion cell. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. Mason earned her doctorate in invertebrate zoology and endocrinology at University of California, Berkeley. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1967 she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship. Mason studies the role of transcriptional regulators and guidance mechanisms in the mammalian visual system. In particular, she studies the retinal ganglion cell, which connects the eye to the thalamus, which act as sensory relay stations. Half of the retinal ganglion cells send information to one side of the thalamus, whereas the other half send information to the other side. Mason studies how these axons know whether or not to cross over the optical chiasm. Mason focussed on the tips of the axons, and found that most extend across the same side of their brains as where they start. Visual impairments occur due to misrouting of retinal fibres at the optical chiasm, connecting them to contralateral not ipsilateral targets. She is investigating how the melanogenic pathway from the retinal pigment epithelium impacts retinal patterning. She is studying how gene activity can transform stem cells into retinal ganglion cells which could be used for restoring vision.

Mason serves as an editor of the journals eLife, Current Opinion in Neurology and Neural Development. As President of the Society for Neuroscience, Mason called for action on improving diversity within the neuroscience community.

Awards and honours 2006 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2013 President of the Society for Neuroscience 2016 António Champalimaud Foundation Champalimaud Vision Award 2017 Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award