The Iliff family has long been associated with oculoplastic surgery and excellence in patient care. Charles E. Iliff III graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1939 and served on the faculty of the Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine, for four decades. At the time of his death in 1997 at age 86, Iliff was a professor emeritus of ophthalmology at Wilmer. He was internationally renowned for his groundbreaking work in oculoplastics, cataract surgery and corneal transplantation that contributed greatly to the standards of modern ophthalmology. His two sons, Jack and Nicholas, both became oculoplastic surgeons, as well, and both also trained at Wilmer.

“The Iliff family has had an enormous impact on oculoplastic surgery,” says Ashley Campbell, M.D., an associate professor in the Division of Oculoplastics at Wilmer, who was named the newest recipient of the Charles E. Iliff III, M.D. Professorship in Ophthalmology in September 2025. The professorship was established in 2005 by an anonymous donor and grateful patient to honor Iliff’s name and legacy. In addition, members of the Wilmer faculty have made commitments to this professorship.

Campbell is the second person to hold the Iliff professorship; the first was the late Iliff’s son Nicholas T. Iliff, M.D., with whom Campbell had the privilege of working when she was in medical school.

“I experienced firsthand his surgical expertise and willingness to teach,” Campbell says. “All the Iliffs were known for their exceptional bedside manner. I’m very honored to receive this professorship and to carry on the values the Iliffs embodied in taking care of their patients. I hope to continue that legacy in my own work here.”

For 20 years, Nicholas Iliff cared for Sharon Kress, performing multiple eye surgeries following injuries she sustained in a serious car accident. “He’s an amazing man,” said Kress in a 2023 interview. “I live in New Jersey and if I couldn’t get an appointment, he met me at Bayview on Saturdays,” she said, as just one example of how Iliff would go above and beyond for her.

Like Nicholas Iliff before her, Campbell devotes much of her time to direct patient care, both in the clinic and the operating room, treating a wide range of patients and pathologies. She collaborates on many combined cases with other subspecialists at Johns Hopkins, including neurosurgeons, rhinologists, otolaryngologists and facial plastic surgeons.

In the realm of research, Campbell’s primary focus is on trying to determine the genetic drivers of sebaceous carcinoma, a rare but aggressive skin cancer that arises from the oil-producing glands in the skin and commonly develops on the eyelids. She is working to better understand how emerging immunotherapies could be used to treat the condition.

The Iliff professorship will help support that research. “My dream is to come up with a better, more targeted therapy for sebaceous carcinoma,” she says.

“Generations of Wilmer residents (myself among them) who worked with ‘the Iliff boys’ know that Charlie, Nick and Jack were remarkably capable and caring physicians and gifted surgeons,” says Peter J. McDonnell, M.D., the Alan and Marlene Norton Director of the Wilmer Eye Institute and the William Holland Wilmer Professor of Ophthalmology. “They were role models for us young doctors and it is most fitting that the Iliff name and legacy will continue to be honored at Wilmer.”