Steven Fliesler:  

To quote Jerry Garcia, "What a long, strange trip it's been." After graduation from Hillsdale High, I did 2 yrs at CSM, then went to UCSD (as a chemistry major), and then transferred to UC Berkeley my senior year (graduated Dec. '73, B.A., biochemistry). Jed Rose and I were roommates that year (a LOT of stories there). I went off to Houston for grad school, getting my PhD at Rice University in biochemistry (finished in 1979, but thesis awarded formally in May 1980). While at Rice, I met and married my first wife (Paula), with whom I had two wonderful children, now adults (Jared, 24, lives in San Francisco; Ellen, 28, lives in Chicago) [SEE "PHOTOS"]. I did postdoctoral research at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and briefly had a non-tenure track faculty position (Cullen Eye Institute) before moving to the University of Miami School of Medicine for my first, bona fide tenure-track faculty job, at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. Three years later (March, 1988), I moved to St. Louis to take a position at the Bethesda Eye Institute, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, initially as an associate prof and then (in 1994) as a full profeesor. I stay there for 20 years, the last few of which I was the Director of Research in the Dept. of Ophthalmology ...Expand for more