Sue Lightman qualified from the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London and spent several years in medicine before training as an Ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital. She studied for her PhD in cellular immunology at the The National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, England and then attended the National Eye Institute at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD. On returning to the UK she was awarded an MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship and Consultant Ophthalmologist at the Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital. In 1990 she took up the Duke Elder Chair at the Institute and then the University Chair of Clinical Ophthalmology in 1993 which she currently holds, Her main clinical interests are in intraocular infection and inflammation and runs a research group looking at the effects of T-cell cytokines in the eye.