Silvia Cerolini is CEO of Eyes on the Future and a non-for-profit organization accelerating research on Inherited Retinal Dystrophies (IRD) causing progressive sight loss in children. Silvia’s 9-year-old daughter, Vicky, has been diagnosed with an untreatable form of IRD driven by gene RDH12 and is, unfortunately, slowly going blind. Since the diagnosis, Silvia has been actively advocating and fundraising to support research into RDH12 IRD, raising raised over $3.5 Million. She coordinates the global patient organization with families from over 20 countries. Her work led to multiple scientific publications and, most importantly, to concrete advancement across several therapeutics approaches from drug repurposing to gene therapy.  Passionate about data and technology, she is also looking at how innovation can accelerate clinical development especially in outcome measures and trial design for rare eye diseases. Her efforts have been featured on TV and Press all over Europe from BBC to Vanity Fair and at prestigious conferences like the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). Originally Italian, Silvia lives with her family in London where she also works as Head of GTM Transformation and Innovation for Sanofi.