The technology is based on a discovery by Dr. Sheila Nirenberg, a professor at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, who unraveled the neural code of the retina – that is, the code the retina uses to tell your brain what you’re seeing. Dr. Nirenberg has won numerous awards for this work, including a MacArthur Genius Award, and she and Bionic Sight are using it to develop a new approach for treating blindness.