Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
We are delighted to announce that thanks to generous support from Research to Prevent Blindness, Eyewire II is now officially underway!
This rendered animation from the Eyewire II dataset shows one of 5 clusters of calcium imaged retinal cells. These cells compute visual information, such as motion, and many send information from the back of the eye directly into the brain. These cells are part of Eyewire II, which is building the world’s largest synapse resolution retinal connectomics dataset to help decipher the cells and circuits that make vision possible. Animation credit: Amy Sterling, Princeton University.
--
Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) is pleased to announce that a $950,000 RPB Transformational Team Science Award has been made to the Eyewire II project, a collaborative research effort to create the first fully-mapped region of the mammalian central nervous system. With key support from RPB being granted to the U.S.-based team, Eyewire II will create an open-source data resource that will be available to the entire research field, with particular relevance to work in neuroscience and vision science.
The international team of scientists leading Eyewire II are creating a map of the mouse retina at an unprecedented level of detail. They are combining two state-of-the-art techniques—functional calcium imaging and 3D electron microscopy—to create a complete wiring diagram of all the cell types in the mouse retina and all the synapses that connect them. A wiring diagram of a set of neural circuits is called a connectome. A complete connectome fundamentally alters and elevates an entire research field.
Anyone studying how visual information is processed in the retina will be able to utilize the Eyewire II dataset to build upon a shared foundation of knowledge about the more than 100 neuron types and their millions of connections that comprise retinal circuits.
Mouse models of many retinal diseases already exist, including glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and a host of genetic disorders. A major barrier in the field has been the rigor with which scientists can study dysfunction in these models. Most studies report only descriptive, large-scale effects, like changes in the thickness of retinal layers or the number of dead cells. Following the completion of Eyewire II, the next generation of these studies will instead reveal which specific cells and circuits are affected first in each disease. Since most retinal cell types show strong conservation from mice to humans, navigating disease models with the connectome map of the retina will usher in an era of precision medicine in ophthalmology.
The research, as well as the research model, stands to undergo a revolution.
“Eyewire II will enable the global retinal neuroscience community to establish itself as a model for efficient community science and open data-sharing practices. Fields like cosmology and particle physics have led the way in large, international projects. There is a growing appreciation that many of the next major steps in biology will require similar large-scale efforts,” said Dr. Schwartz. “With 25 labs around the world currently participating in the Eyewire II Consortium, we are establishing our team as a model for large-scale research projects in biology.”
Learn more about this partnership in the official announcement: rpbusa.org/news-press/research-to-prevent-blindness-award-to-enable-transformational-scientific-milestone-in-neuroscience-and-vision-science
We are delighted to announce that thanks to generous support from Research to Prevent Blindness, Eyewire II is now officially underway!
This rendered animation from the Eyewire II dataset shows one of 5 clusters of calcium imaged retinal cells. These cells compute visual information, such as motion, and many send information from the back of the eye directly into the brain. These cells are part of Eyewire II, which is building the world’s largest synapse resolution retinal connectomics dataset to help decipher the cells and circuits that make vision possible. Animation credit: Amy Sterling, Princeton University.
--
Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) is pleased to announce that a $950,000 RPB Transformational Team Science Award has been made to the Eyewire II project, a collaborative research effort to create the first fully-mapped region of the mammalian central nervous system. With key support from RPB being granted to the U.S.-based team, Eyewire II will create an open-source data resource that will be available to the entire research field, with particular relevance to work in neuroscience and vision science.
The international team of scientists leading Eyewire II are creating a map of the mouse retina at an unprecedented level of detail. They are combining two state-of-the-art techniques—functional calcium imaging and 3D electron microscopy—to create a complete wiring diagram of all the cell types in the mouse retina and all the synapses that connect them. A wiring diagram of a set of neural circuits is called a connectome. A complete connectome fundamentally alters and elevates an entire research field.
Anyone studying how visual information is processed in the retina will be able to utilize the Eyewire II dataset to build upon a shared foundation of knowledge about the more than 100 neuron types and their millions of connections that comprise retinal circuits.
Mouse models of many retinal diseases already exist, including glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and a host of genetic disorders. A major barrier in the field has been the rigor with which scientists can study dysfunction in these models. Most studies report only descriptive, large-scale effects, like changes in the thickness of retinal layers or the number of dead cells. Following the completion of Eyewire II, the next generation of these studies will instead reveal which specific cells and circuits are affected first in each disease. Since most retinal cell types show strong conservation from mice to humans, navigating disease models with the connectome map of the retina will usher in an era of precision medicine in ophthalmology.
The research, as well as the research model, stands to undergo a revolution.
“Eyewire II will enable the global retinal neuroscience community to establish itself as a model for efficient community science and open data-sharing practices. Fields like cosmology and particle physics have led the way in large, international projects. There is a growing appreciation that many of the next major steps in biology will require similar large-scale efforts,” said Dr. Schwartz. “With 25 labs around the world currently participating in the Eyewire II Consortium, we are establishing our team as a model for large-scale research projects in biology.”
Learn more about this partnership in the official announcement: rpbusa.org/news-press/research-to-prevent-blindness-award-to-enable-transformational-scientific-milestone-in-neuroscience-and-vision-science
