Marcela Votruba is Professor of Ophthalmology at Cardiff University and Honorary Consultant Ophthalmologist at the University Hospital of Wales, UK. She has been the Head of the School of Optometry & Vision Sciences at Cardiff University since Jan 2014. Previously she was a Consultant Ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

She read Physiological Sciences at Oxford University and trained at the Oxford Medical School, followed by training in ophthalmology at Bristol and Moorfields Eye Hospitals. Her Wellcome Trust Vision Research Training fellowship funded PhD in Human Molecular Genetics was at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology in the lab of Professor Shomi Bhattacharya and at Moorfields Eye Hospital under Professor Tony Moore. In 2000 her early-career research team at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology published the first paper identifying the gene OPA1 causing familial optic atrophy. She moved to Cardiff in 2003 in order to take up an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship to study the role of mitochondrial fusion and fission genes in the pathophysiology of optic neuropathy. She has continued to publish work on the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying blindness due to retinal ganglion cell loss in mitochondrial optic neuropathy. Her recent research has focused on developing new translational therapeutic interventions and both pre-clinical and clinical trials.