Health & Medicine 2023

From caring for world leaders to fighting pandemics, GW’s medical enterprise has been at the forefront of education, research and care for generations, led by faculty at the top of their fields.

One such remarkable physician is Dr. David Belyea, MBA ‘08, who in 2023 became GW’s inaugural Daniel P. Shepard, MD, and Dennis D. Shepard, MD, Professor in Ophthalmology. Before retiring as a Colonel after 32 years of service, Belyea was a U.S. Army Medical Corps physician in hospitals around the globe earning him the prestigious Legion of Merit. He has received numerous teaching awards and is widely published on novel technologies that improve treatment  for cataracts and glaucoma. 

At GW, Belyea serves as chair of the Department of Ophthalmology. His new endowed professorship was established by father and son School of Medicine and Health Sciences alumni, the late Dennis D. Shepard, MD ’63, and Daniel P. Shepard, MD ’96, MPH ’96. A leader in intraocular lenses and refractive surgery, Dennis Shepard founded the Shepard Eye Center in 1967, one of the world’s largest eye clinics. His son Daniel is also a renowned ophthalmologist, specializing in the treatment of eye trauma and authoring significant studies on macular degeneration and diseases of the retina.

“We look at this as a family,” said Daniel Shepard. “We realize the privileges that have come from opportunities provided by George Washington University and see the responsibility to give back to the community in general and the opportunity to give back to GW in particular.”