Neal A. Sher, MD, FACS

A New York native, Dr. Sher received his BA and MD degrees with honors from Boston University at age 22. After an internship at the University of Minnesota Hospitals, he joined the U.S. Public Health Service in 1972, serving as a Staff Associate in the FDA's Division of Biologic Standards, housed on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. Over the next three years, he conducted tumor immunology and immunotherapy research using BCG vaccine as a cancer treatment agent, authoring a number of papers in the field. There he grew interested in ocular immunology and switched into ophthalmology, completing his residency at the University of Minnesota and a fellowship in corneal and external disease at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. Returning to Minneapolis in 1979, he entered private practice with the group that became Eye Care Associates, which grew to 65 employees across several offices. He left clinical practice in Minneapolis in June 2020 and relocated to Chicago.

Dr. Sher was a founding member and attending surgeon at the Phillips Eye Institute (1987), later serving as Chief of Ophthalmology. Phillips grew into one of the nation's highest-volume eye surgery centers before its clinical services were consolidated into the Abbott Northwestern Hospital campus in 2022, where the Phillips Eye Institute name continues today as a hospital department. He was on the adjunct faculty of the University of Minnesota Medical School from 1979 to 2021, achieving the rank of Adjunct Clinical Professor, and in 2022 became an Adjunct Lecturer in Ophthalmology at Northwestern University Medical School.