Stephen Allen Burns received his Ph.D. in bio physics from Ohio State University in 1977. He held positions at the Harvard University and the University of Pittsburgh before joining the Eye Research Institute in 1987. In 1992, he became a senior scientist there. Today, he is Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Professor at Indiana University. He was elected a Fellow of OSA in 1993, and in 2010 he received the Edgar D. Tillyer Award “for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the photoreceptor mechanisms through electrophysiology, psychophysics, optics and in vivo retinal imaging.”