The Medical College of Wisconsin bestowed its 2024 Alumna of the Year Award to Anne Hanneken, MD, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research. This award is among the college’s highest honors to acknowledge alumni contributions to improving human health through medicine and science. Hanneken, who earned her MD in 1984, is also a retinal surgeon at Scripps Memorial Hospital and the vice president of Retina Consultants San Diego.

“This acknowledgement is a thrill that I accept with both appreciation and humility,” Hanneken said in her official remarks. “This recognition is also a source of personal pride and a reminder of the valuable support that I had doing research during medical school, which allowed me to pursue my dream of combining research and clinical work simultaneously during my career.”

Hanneken was recognized for her bench-to-bedside research related to macular degeneration and transplantation. At Scripps Research, Hanneken focuses on improving vision function, specifically by studying retinal cells called photoreceptors, which are responsible for converting light into electrical signals sent to the brain. Her main goal is to discover new treatments for retinal disease.

Working with a multidisciplinary team of vision scientists, transplant surgeons, electrophysiologists and ophthalmologists, Hanneken revived and reestablished light sensing in human organ donor eyes that were recovered after death. The consortium is known as the “revEYEval group” and is now involved in a national initiative known as THEA (Transplantation of the Human Eye Allograft) funded by ARPA-H, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Hanneken has also extensively researched the localization of vascular endothelial growth factors—proteins that stimulate the creation of new blood vessels—in the retinas of patients with diabetes. Her work in this area contributed to the development of the drug Avastin to treat macular degeneration.

Throughout her career, Hanneken has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2023 Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute Distinguished Alumna of the Year Award, the 2016 Marquette University Distinguished Alumna of the Year Award, the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Award, the Hornaday Vitreoretinal Award, and the Heed-Knapp Fellowship. She was also named a top doctor by Castle Connolly between 2017 and 2024.