Meet Dr. Atalie Carina Thompson

I am a board-certified and fellowship-trained glaucoma specialist with training in the medical and surgical treatment of glaucoma, cataracts, and comprehensive ophthalmology. I chose to become a glaucoma specialist because I enjoy getting to know my patients and being able to take care of them over many years of longitudinal follow-up. In clinical decision-making, I take a patient-centered and evidence-based approach, and partner with my patients to help them make the best possible decision for the management of their eye disease. I am grateful to be in an academic environment where I also have the opportunity to teach residents and medical students, and interact with excellent colleagues across a university health system.

In addition to my clinical and teaching duties, I am a clinician-scientist with active research interests studying imaging and visual function in age-related diseases such as glaucoma, Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s Disease, and investigating the development and implementation of artificial intelligence for detection of neurodegenerative diseases of the eye and brain.

I completed my undergraduate degree at Harvard College, my medical degree at Stanford Medical School, and a master’s in public health at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. I trained in ophthalmology at Duke Eye Center and completed a glaucoma fellowship at Duke. I am now at Wake Forest Baptist Health, where I serve as Vice Chair of Learning Health Systems in the Department of Surgical Ophthalmology and am a Pepper Scholar with a co-appointment in Gerontology and Geriatrics and membership in the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation.