Chemistry Professor Michael Hill and student Mimi Chen (senior) presented at the American Chemistry Society (ACS) fall meeting in August 2025 about their research on electrolysis, a process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, as a potential alternative to LASIK surgery, a procedure that reshapes the cornea and corrects vision with a laser.
Hill leads the Electromechanical Corneal Reshaping for Refractive Vision Correction lab at Occidental College, where Chen, along with Maggie Hill (sophomore), Skylar Cottell (sophomore) and Damien Chow (sophomore) conduct research in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine (UCI), according to Chen.
Hill began teaching at Occidental in 1994 and has been leading labs since September of the same year. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that the lab began research into electrolysis, Hill said. The project began when head and neck surgeon and biomedical engineer Dr. Brian Wong of UCI contacted Hill for a partnership due to his specialty in electrochemistry, Hill said.
Hill said Wong specializes in the structural cartilage of the face, and he began thinking of other ways to conduct surgeries on cartilage that are cheaper and less invasive.
“His original idea was that he would somehow use an infrared laser, which generates heat,” Hill said. “His idea was to heat the tissue up, soften it and then mold it to a new shape, then it cools down and then it’s locked in position.”
During Wong’s research, a graduate student of his came up with the idea of using electrodes to pass current through the cartilage, rather than using a laser, according to Hill. This led to the discovery that cartilage changed shape in this process.
Hill said the lab started experimenting with applying this procedure to the cornea in 2019, right before the COVID-19 pandemic. After that, they shut down the lab for a year.
Chen said that a regular lab day usually involves testing on rabbit eyeballs. Working in the lab requires a great deal of engineering, Chen said, because they must design and 3D print treatment lenses to use for their electromechanical experiments.
“We use a potential stat which is our electrical source, and we hook that up to our treatment lens, which has a curved piece of platinum that is the shape that we want our cornea to be and that piece of platinum will touch the surface of the eye,” Chen said. “When we run electricity through that platinum onto the eye, that turns water into oxygen and then protons, and these protons will diffuse through the cornea, which is the tissue on the top of the eye, and that softens it temporarily and allows it to form into the shape of the platinum lens.”
According to Hill, the lab recently got approved to test on live rabbits. Hill said they first start with working on synthetic tissue, then move to postmortem tissue and eventually live animals. They will be continuing this next step of the experiment at UCI this fall.
Chen said she joined the lab her second semester of her first year, because she felt that the project applied to her as a nearsighted person. She said she was not sure if she wanted to pursue very theoretical chemistry and felt that working in Hill’s lab was a great way to solve a practical problem using chemistry concepts.
Maggie Hill, Hill’s daughter, said she began spending time in the lab years before attending college, at around 5 years old.
“My summer camp growing up was coming here and hanging out,” Maggie Hill said. “Then, when I was old enough to actually do work in the lab, it just seemed like the natural step, and I was interested in the project.”
According to Hill, he was invited to the ACS meeting by Ariel Furst, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who had previously worked with his lab at Occidental. Hill said Furst wanted him to talk at her symposium for an award she had won. Since he was already participating in the ACS meeting, Hill decided to send an abstract of their research so that he and Chen could have a chance to present their findings as well, Hill said.
Chen said she is very grateful to have had the opportunity to work in this lab and share her research with others.
“I think it’s really cool that I got the opportunity to work on this project as an undergrad because it’s really cool science and it has a lot of potential to go somewhere,” Chen said.
Maggie Hill said that as a geology major, the research experience she gains in a lab can translate to her geology research, especially because it is something that has not been done before.
Hill said after years of research and trials on live animals, once they have ensured that the shape change in the cornea persists in the long term, he hopes this medical procedure will someday be used in real life.
According to Hill, it is important that the government does not cut funding from basic science research and continues supporting scientists.
“In a million years, we never would have said, ‘Oh, someday I want to do electric chemistry on eyeballs to fix somebody’s vision.’ It was just the foundational, basic research that allowed applications like this to happen, and that’s what we’re not funding anymore,” Hill said. “Will our technique ever make it to the clinic? I mean, I hope so, but I don’t know. But what I do know is, this current gutting of basic science research is going to have effects that we’ll never even know [about].”
Contact Francine Ghazarian at ghazarian@oxy.edu
