James Benjamin Martel is a physician, surgeon and scientist. He is former Chair of Surgery, Mercy San Juan Medical Center, former Chief of Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology (ENT), and Plastic Surgery, Sutter Roseville Medical Center. He is the former Director of Ophthalmology, Sutter General and Memorial Hospitals and assistant professor of Ophthalmology and Radiology, Johns Hopkins Medical School and Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute. He is currently Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology and Associate Dean of Graduate Medical Education in California Northstate University College of Medicine. Early life James Martel received a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University; a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School; a Masters in Public Health in the area of Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health and received his surgical subspecialty training in ophthalmology from Johns Hopkins Medical School and Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute. In the early 1980s, while at Harvard Medical School, Howe Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, he was among the first investigators to apply NMR spectroscopy to study tissue metabolism non-destructively. The research was able to demonstrate the conversion of glucose to sorbitol in the single intact lens which supported the hypothesis that sorbitol led tissue damage in diabetes. The condition of diabetes leads to uncontrolled levels of glucose in the body. The ability to monitor glucose and its metabolism in by non-invasive methodology in living tissue allows facilitated the understanding of this disease state. His research on the living lens was used to understand diabetic cataract formation. During this time, in collaboration with Dr. Leo Chylack, Jr., he demonstrated the statistical correlation between diabetes and posterior subcapsular cataracts. For this specific work, he was awarded the Soma Weiss Award from Harvard Medical School. Aguayo Martel further probed the association of human behavior and cataract formation using non-linear regression analysis. Career After finishing his internship at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, he moved to Baltimore where at Johns Hopkins medical institutions, Dr. Martel led a research team as the associate director of NMR Research, which developed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Microscopy, a technique for non-invasively obtaining microscopic three-dimensional images of living objects. The technique first applied to a single living cell signaled the advent of a new class of instruments which would eventually allow monitoring cellular structures and their biochemistry inside the human body, or to perform "biopsies" without needles or surgery. He applied his MR microscopy to the