SUMMARY Overall The overall purpose of the Vision Research Core Grant is to provide core services and resources to enhance and accelerate the productivity and impact of the vision research community at University of California, San Diego. Specifically, the Vision Research Core grant will leverage the outstanding basic science and clinical research expertise of National Eye Institute funded investigators by providing important resources and services organized into the following 4 distinct cores. 1. The Biostatistics Core will provide dedicated statistical expertise for the vision research community at UCSD. There are several common analysis themes and statistical issues that can be addressed effectively and efficiently by having a dedicated biostatistician familiar with eye research to analyze vision related data and to ensure rigor and transparency of the results. 2. The Animal Structure and Function Core will provide shared instrumentation and a technician to assist with ocular structural imaging and functional imaging in animals. 3. The Computational Ophthalmology core provides i) dedicated high-performance CPU and GPU computing resources ii) a computer programmer, iii) institutional software licenses and iv) secure file sharing and backup services to support UCSD's cellular, animal and human vision research studies. 4. The Tissue Processing and Histology Core provides rapid characterization of eye tissue with respect to histology, immunohistochemistry and confocal microscopy by supporting instrumentation and a technician who is familiar with ocular anatomy and techniques required to properly process ocular tissues. These cores will improve the efficiency and productivity and impact of UCSD vision scientists by providing core services that are unavailable to individual investigators. The core grant infrastructure and resources also leverages the expertise of each participating investigator to enhance multidisciplinary collaboration for the benefit of the entire UCSD vision research community.