Research Roundup
Congratulations to Lauren Schneider (OD/MS’22) for being selected to receive the 2024 William C. Ezell Fellowship! The Ezell Fellowship is a prestigious award given by the American Academy of Optometry Foundation to recognize and assist talented individuals in vision research with their pursuit of advanced degrees in optometric research and education. Dr. Schneider is a PhD student advised by Heather Anderson, OD, PhD, and has been awarded the American Academy of Optometry Ezell Fellowship this year.
Andy Hartwick, OD, PhD, was awarded $40,000 by the Plum Foundation for his study, Effect of daily monochromatic light exposure on traumatic brain injury-associated photophobia symptoms and pupillary light. Many people develop intolerance to light after a head injury. With this condition, ambient light levels can cause discomfort, resulting in these individuals often having to wear dark sunglasses even while indoors. Unfortunately, we still do not fully understand the mechanism underlying this symptom and how this condition should be treated. There are ganglion cell photoreceptors in the retina whose primary task is to signal to the brain information about ambient light levels, and prior work in the lab indicates that this signaling can be altered after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The grant from the Plum Foundation will enable Dr. Hartwick to continue to investigate changes in these neurons’ ability to adapt to changing light levels in individuals with TBI and will explore the effect of prior light exposure on the function of these photoreceptors.
2024 T35 program
Each year the College of Optometry selects first-year optometry students interested in optometric research to participate in its National Eye Institute-funded summer research training program (T35). These nine students are spending the 13 weeks of summer exploring their interest in research with College of Optometry faculty mentors. The goal of the program is to encourage professional students to embark on a career in eye research.
Andrew Vanacore
Advisor: Bradley Dougherty (OD/MS’07, PhD’13)
Why the T35 program is important to me:
An influential factor in my choice to go to The Ohio State University College of Optometry was its emphasis on driving our profession forward with research. The T35 program has allowed me to focus my efforts to help low vision patients receive a driver’s license that they otherwise would not be able to obtain. I’m very thankful for the opportunity to learn more about how research influences how we practice as optometrists, and I am looking forward to continuing progress toward a master’s degree alongside my remaining years in the OD curriculum!
What I’m doing:
With low vision rehabilitation, patients are able to complete a driving program in order to acquire a driver’s license. Currently, a standardized and accepted training protocol for new bioptic drivers does not exist. However, policies that would implement driving training rely on research surrounding bioptic training sessions. I am conducting a pilot study to address the needs of novice bioptic users with the use of evidence-based simulator training in hopes that we can incorporate our findings into existing training programs available for low vision bioptic drivers.
Betsy Sellers
Advisor: Jenny Fogt (OD’99, MS)
Why the T35 program is important to me
The T35 program has given me a chance to learn more about the research side of optometry and changed my view of future career paths. I’ve had the chance to learn more about dry eye disease without the stress of the semester while also getting a head-start on learning some clinical skills. I’ve really enjoyed getting to work with my advisor and learn from her both about my specific research focus and overall, about her experience in the field of optometry and why she ended up getting into research. I look forward to finishing the summer researching and then continuing with the project as I begin the OD/MS program in the fall.
What I’m doing
I am studying the lipid composition of the tear film and investigating whether or not there is a difference between the actual lipid content of individuals with and without dry eye disease. Previous studies have looked at how dry eye disease changes the lipid composition of meibum lipids, but our study is generalizing this more to look at all the lipids in the tear film not just those from the meibomian glands. Because so little is still understood about how dry eye changes the lipid layer of the tear film, the hope is that this research will provide us with some of those answers and in the future lead to a better understanding of how to treat and manage dry eye disease.
Emily Slywka
Advisor: Melissa Bailey (OD/MS‘01, PhD‘04)
Why the T35 program is important to me
The T35 grant has given me the opportunity to immerse myself in my master’s research this summer. I am grateful to have the time, funds, and support that I need to learn about vision science research and conduct my own study with the help of my advisor. I really enjoy working towards the goal of my master’s degree alongside my friends in the program.
What I’m doing
I am investigating potential relationships between a patient’s response to latanoprost and their ciliary muscle dimensions. We are using an AS-OCT to take photos of the ciliary muscles for our measurements. I hope that this research can help streamline glaucoma care in the future if optometrists are able to predict how a patient will respond to the drug based on their ocular anatomy.
Kayla Bartram
Advisor: Deyue Yu, PhD
Why the T35 program is important to me
I am grateful to be part of the T35 program as the flexibility of summer provides ample time to learn from my advisor and develop independence in conducting research. The program establishes a collaborative environment in which the T35 students can progress together in their master’s of vision science projects whilst learning foundational research principles from various faculty members. I believe this experience will be pivotal to my future as a clinician, both in and out of a research laboratory.
What I’m doing
My study involves the development of a novel training protocol with the goal of improving contrast sensitivity function through perceptual learning. Perceptual learning has been established to improve performance of various visual tasks and have a long-lasting effect, but training can be time-consuming and difficult to carry out. Our novel training method utilizes identity priming, prior knowledge of the target letter identity, to minimize training effort and improve training accessibility as compared to conventional means. This method has potential application in low vision rehabilitation for contrast sensitivity deficits if proven effective. Our findings will also provide new insights into the neural basis of the visual perceptual learning.
Nathaniel Cummings
Advisor: Marjean Kulp (OD‘91, MS’93)
Why the T35 program is important to me
The T35 program is important to me because it gives me valuable research experience and gives me a head start on my master’s degree. I’m thankful to my mentor Dr. Kulp and all the professors that have taught us and given us guidance.
What I’m doing
I am testing the accuracy of several new autorefractors and examining their potential utility in vision screening for school-aged children.
Holland Tolliver
Advisor: Heather Chandler, PhD
Why the T35 program is important to me
The T35 program is something I have heard about for years, and I am honored to participate in it this year! This program has allowed me to truly put all my focus into my research project, which I feel is essential to making great progress. I have been able to learn a new skill set about how research is conducted in a clinical/academic setting, which will only help further my career and ultimately help my patients!
What I’m doing
I am working in a wet lab (with no patients, so very different from most T35 participants!) to further study ways to inhibit secondary cataracts. I am growing adherent lens epithelial cells onto different types of modified silicone coverslips coatings (mimicking IOLs) to analyze which coatings inhibit the migration of lens epithelial cells but are not cytotoxic to ocular cells. By determining which coatings inhibit lens epithelial cell migration, it could give us another tool to safely inhibit the formation of secondary cataracts.
Derik Holmberg
Advisor: Don Mutti, OD, PhD
Why the T35 program is important to me
The T35 program allows me to conduct my research without the burden of the optometry curriculum. In the clinic this summer, I’ve observed that much of our research can change how we treat patients. I’m grateful for this opportunity to work with my friends and advisors this summer.
What I’m doing
My research is in myopia control. Not every millimeter of elongation contributes to myopia progression because as the eye grows there’s compensation by changes in other ocular components. Is myopia control inhibiting just the millimeters that contribute to progression, the compensated millimeters, or some combination of the two elongation forms? To answer this question, the location of the second principal point of the eye (H’) can be used to estimate the diopter of change in refractive error that results from each millimeter of axial elongation.
Rhiannon Marshall
Advisor: Phillip Yuhas (OD/MS’14, PhD’19)
Why the T35 program important to me
The T35 program has provided me with the ability to utilize the summer as a time to adjust to the workload that accompanies pursuing a master’s degree in addition to an OD. I have begun learning and practicing new skills that will prove to be invaluable this fall. I’m very grateful for this experience and am looking forward to working with my advisors and classmates over the next several years!
What I’m doing
For my T35 program and master’s degree, I’m working to establish whether characteristics of the Henle fiber layer and foveal morphology change depending on an individual’s axial length. The hope is that a correlation will become evident, and that the data collected in this study could be used to support the notion that the macula is an important site for determining the presence or absence of neurodegenerative diseases.
Ramith Ambati
Advisor: Angela Brown, PhD, and Del Lindsey, PhD
Why the T35 program important to me
The T35 program has provided me with a crucial platform to delve into research and academia during my master’s degree journey, free from the demands of the OD curriculum. This experience has been instrumental in helping me understand research as a foundational component of clinical practice and helping me develop the skills to address complex problems with evidence-based solutions. I’ve gained invaluable insights into navigating medical research and honed my ability to critically analyze data and apply findings to real-world scenarios.
What I’m doing
Hering’s Opponent Process Theory is the standard theory of color appearance, as it explains several key features of human color perception. It was originally hypothesized that the perceptual phenomena predicted by Hering’s Opponent Process Theory had a basis in lower-level ascending visual pathways, but there is mounting evidence that they are instead a feature of top-down cognitive neural processing. Previous fMRI studies by our lab show that area V4 of the occipital lobe becomes more active in when subjects perform hue-scaling tasks, which are a classic test of Hering’s theory. My project aims to expand our previous work and overcome limitations of our previous study by performing whole-brain fMRI scans of subjects performing hue scaling tasks to better characterize the activity of V4 and examine what other regions of the brain may be involved in task-dependent color vision processing.
