Kathy Dorey will retire from her fulltime role as professor in the Department of Basic Science Education at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, effective November 29, after more than a decade of service at the medical school.

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine will have an open house for anyone who wants to give Kathy well wishes for her next chapter. It will be Tuesday, December 10 from 1-3 p.m. in the Dean’s Conference Room at the medical school.

Kathy will keep her faculty title and continue serving on school committees including the Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure (APT) committee.

“Kathy is a valued member of our department and the entire medical school committee, particularly as one of our founding faculty members having joined VTCSOM a year prior to its doors opening to the charter class,” said Renee LeClair. “We are fortunate that though she is retiring, she has offered to continue serving the medical school in other capacities.”

Among her many responsibilities, Kathy helped implement and execute the medical school’s problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. She has served as a faculty facilitator of PBL groups while also delivering lectures and workshops for students, with an emphasis on embryology, research, cell biology, and histology.

Kathy also has a robust research background, particularly related to age-related macular degeneration and other retinal diseases. In 2010, Current Eye Research named Kathy the Reviewer of the Year.

“Teaching future physicians and ophthalmology residents and fellows has been my passion as a faculty member over the last four and a half decades,” Kathy said. “It’s been a fulfilling and busy career. I look forward to expanding focus on our patented hypoxia-regulated gene therapy in retirement, but glad I can continue contributing to the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.”

Prior to joining VTCSOM, Kathy had held faculty roles at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine at FAU, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School/Schepens Eye Research, and USC School of Medicine/Doheny Eye Institute.

Kathy received her bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She completed her Ph.D. at Georgetown University and post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California.