Silvia Cerolini is the founder and CEO of Eyes on the Future, a UK-based not-for-profit organization accelerating research on Inherited Retinal Dystrophies (IRD) causing progressive sight loss in children. Cerolini’s 10-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, Cerolini has been actively advocating and fundraising to support research into RDH12 IRD. She coordinates the global patient organization with families from over 20 countries that have raised about $5 million so far. Her work led to multiple scientific publications and, most importantly, to concrete advancement across several therapeutic approaches, from drug repurposing to gene therapy. Her current focus is to drive novel and collaborative profit/nonprofit partnerships to advance rare disease gene therapy programs. Passionate about innovation and technology, she is also looking at how data and AI can accelerate clinical development, especially in outcome measures and trial design for rare eye diseases.