Michael Tri Hoang Do

Michael Tri Hoang Do serves as Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and conducts research at Boston Children's Hospital. His laboratory investigates how light drives diverse functions ranging from visual perception to setting of the internal body clock, with research spanning organizational levels from molecules to circuits and time scales from milliseconds to hours. Focusing primarily on the retina and brain, his work employs electrophysiological and optical techniques applied both in vitro and in vivo.

• Harvard Medical School, PhD in Neurobiology (2004)
• Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Postdoc in Neuroscience (2011)

Dr. Do's research centers on understanding visual mechanisms across different species to determine how they're tailored to distinct needs. His lab particularly examines how visual performance achieves remarkable dynamic range - from perception elicited by a few photons to functioning under intense light conditions. A key question driving his research is understanding the origins of robustness in cases of severe blindness where visual awareness is lost but light can still synchronize the body clock with the solar day. His work leverages the visual system's advantages where light input is precisely controllable and outputs like patterns of impulses sent from the eye to the brain can be quantified.

Analysis of Dr. Do's recent publications reveals a consistent focus on melanopsin photoreceptors and intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, with increasing emphasis on primate vision systems and molecular classification of retinal cell types. His research trajectory shows progression from fundamental biophysical mechanisms toward understanding how these mechanisms translate to visual perception and behavior. Notably, his work bridges basic science with clinical applications, as evidenced by publications addressing optic atrophy and other visual disorders.

Dr. Do currently serves as Principal Investigator on multiple NIH-funded research projects including R01EY036430 (Neurophysiology of Melanopsin Photoreceptors, 2024-2029), R01EY036071 (Signal Generation and Processing in the Retinohypothalamic Pathway, 2024-2029), and R01EY034089 (Downstream Actions of Biophysical Mechanisms in the Visual System, 2022-2027). His laboratory maintains active collaborations with researchers across multiple institutions, as evidenced by extensive co-author networks including Bean, Bruce; Nguyen Minh, Viet; Morquette, Philippe; Schwarz, Thomas; and Chao, Luke.

Dr. Do's laboratory at the Center for Life Science (3 Blackfan Circle, Boston) focuses on the retina and brain, employing electrophysiological and optical techniques to study visual processing across species. His research team investigates how visual mechanisms are tailored to distinct biological needs, with particular emphasis on the remarkable dynamic range of visual performance and the robustness of non-image forming visual functions even in cases of severe blindness.