Preeya Gupta
The Power List 2020 – Power List
Preeya K. Gupta, MD, Clinical Medical Director, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, Cornea & Refractive Surgery, Duke University Eye Center
If you had three wishes, what would they be?
- To always live in the moment
- To find a cure for chronic dry eye disease
- To save our environment so future generations can enjoy what we have today
What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
If I could garauntee that I would listen to myself, I would tell myself to pause and enjoy the earlier years in my career. So often we finish training and want to be busy clinically right away. But looking back, the first few years of my career really helped to establish who I am today. Not being in a rush to be busy clinically allows us to focus on setting the stage for a successful career — so if I could go back I would take more time to enjoy those first few years when you have time to breathe, plan, and spend extra time on projects or treating patients.
What was the most unexpected turn your career took?
The most unexpected turn in my career was falling into the dry eye space at the start of my career. After completing fellowship I joined the faculty at Duke University, where I felt compelled to create a niche for myself both in terms of practice and academic work. I had been exposed to some advanced treatments for MGD in fellowship and decided to take on that arena to build a practice and academic career. Little did I know that there would soon be an explosion of novel therapies to treat Dry Eye and MGD. It has been a fruitful decade on faculty and with collaboration with my colleagues in industry I feel that I have been able to make a real impact on how we treat these patients today.
