Rate My Professor Jose-Manuel Alonso

Dr. Jose-Manuel Alonso is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biological and Vision Sciences at the State University of New York College of Optometry. He is a visual neuroscientist whose research investigates how neural circuits transform light signals entering the eye into meaningful visual perception. His work focuses on the functional organization of the retina, thalamus, and primary visual cortex, with particular emphasis on how ON and OFF pathways encode increments and decrements of light and contribute to the formation of visual representations in the brain. Using a combination of electrophysiology, computational analysis, and systems neuroscience approaches, his laboratory has identified fundamental mechanisms that shape spatial resolution, contrast sensitivity, and the development of cortical maps. These studies have advanced understanding of thalamocortical processing and revealed key principles governing how visual information is transmitted, integrated, and interpreted across multiple stages of the visual system. Dr. Alonso's research has also provided important insights into the neural mechanisms that regulate ocular growth and refractive development, including how imbalances between ON and OFF visual pathways may contribute to the development of myopia. He mentors graduate students and trainees in vision science and neuroscience at SUNY Optometry.

Dr. Alonso earned his MD and MS from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain in 1989 and his PhD in Neuroscience from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 1992. He completed postdoctoral training at The Rockefeller University under Nobel Laureate Torsten N. Wiesel. He joined the faculty at SUNY College of Optometry in 2002 as Associate Professor, was promoted to Professor in 2007, and appointed Distinguished Professor in 2014. Dr. Alonso was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor in recognition of his sustained record of influential scholarship and leadership in visual neuroscience. His research has been continuously funded by the National Eye Institute since 1999. He has served as a member of the National Advisory Eye Council and chaired NIH study sections. He is a Reviewing Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience. His work has been published in leading journals including Nature, Neuron, Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Neuroscience. Dr. Alonso has received the SUNY Chancellor Award for Excellence in Scholarship and the SUNY Chancellor Award for Research Excellence, as well as Revson and Fulbright fellowships.