Carmen A Puliafito Author

Joel S. Schuman, MD, FACS is Professor and Chairman of Ophthalmology and Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone Medical Center, NYU School of Medicine, and Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in New York, NY. Prior to arriving at NYU in 2016, he was Distinguished Professor and Chairman of Ophthalmology, Eye and Ear Foundation Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology, and Director of UPMC Eye Center (2003-2016) in Pittsburgh, PA, and before that was at Tufts University (1991-2003) in Medford, MA, where he was Residency Director (1991-1999) and Glaucoma and Cataract Service Chief (1991-2003). In 1998, he became Professor of Ophthalmology, and Vice Chair in 2001.
Dr. Schuman and his colleagues were first to identify a molecular marker for human glaucoma, published in Nature Medicine in 2001. Continuously funded by the National Eye Institute as a principal investigator since 1995, he is an inventor of optical coherence tomography (OCT), used worldwide for ocular diagnostics. Dr. Schuman has published more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles.
In 2002, he received the Alcon Research Institute Award and the Lewis Rudin Glaucoma Prize; in 2006, the ARVO Translational Research Award; and in 2012, the Carnegie Science Center Award, as well as sharing the Champalimaud Award (a 1 million Euro cash prize). He was elected to the American Ophthalmological Society in 2008. In 2011, Dr. Schuman was the Clinician-Scientist Lecturer of the American Glaucoma Society. In 2013, he gave the Robert N. Shaffer Lecture at the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Annual Meeting and received the AAO Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, he became a Gold Fellow of ARVO. He was elected to the American Association of Physicians and also received the Fight for Sight Physician/Scientist Award in 2016. He is named in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Medical Sciences Education, America’s Top Doctors and Best Doctors in America, and has been named a Top Doctor by Pittsburgh Magazine 2006–2016.


Carmen A. Puliafito, MD is renowned worldwide as an innovator in the diagnosis and treatment of retinal disease and an accomplished leader in academic medicine.
Recognized as co-inventor of the technology of optical coherence tomography (OCT), Dr. Puliafito was the first ophthalmologist to use this technology to study the human macula in health and disease. For his work on OCT, Dr. Puliafito was awarded (along with James Fujimoto and Eric Swanson) the 2002 Rank Prize—the world’s most prestigious award in optoelectronics. He also shared the 2012 Champalimaud Award for the invention and development of OCT with James G. Fujimoto, David Huang, Joel S. Schuman, and Eric Swanson.
Dr. Puliafito has been on the cutting-edge of innovation throughout his career, most recently participating in the introduction of bevacizumab (Avastin) for the treatment of retinal disorders. He was the first to describe the use of a semiconductor diode laser for retinal photocoagulation, and pioneered basic science research in excimer laser photoablation and optical breakdown and photodisruption.


James G. Fujimoto, PhD is Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Dr Fujimoto’s group and collaborators were responsible for the invention and development of optical coherence tomography (OCT). Their paper, “Optical Coherence Tomography,” which appeared in Science in 1991, has remained one of the highest cited papers in the biophotonics field. Dr. Fujimoto has published over 450 peer-reviewed journal articles and co-edited over 10 books. He was a co-founder of the startup company, Advanced Ophthalmic Devices, which developed OCT for ophthalmic imaging and was acquired by Carl Zeiss. He was also co-founder of Light Lab Imaging, which developed cardiovascular OCT and was later acquired by Goodman, Ltd and St. Jude Medical.
Dr. Fujimoto is influential as an educator and numerous researchers trained in his group are leaders in the field of photonics and biophotonics. He is also active in scientific service. He was program co-chair and general co-chair for the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics CLEO in 2002 and 2004 and was also co-chair of the European Conferences on Biomedical Optics in 2005. Dr. Fujimoto is currently general co-chair of the SPIE BIOS symposium, serving since 2003. Dr. Fujimoto served as a Director of the Optical Society of America from 2000 to 2003 and currently serves as Director of the SPIE the International Society for Optics and Photonics.
Dr. Fujimoto was co-recipient of the Rank Prize in Optoelectronics in 2002, received the Zeiss Research Award in 2011, was co-recipient of the Champalimaud Vision Prize in 2012, received the IEEE Photonics Award in 2014, and received the Optical Society of America Ives Medal in 2015. He is Visiting Professor of Ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, MA, is Adjunct Professor at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, and has an Honorary Doctorate from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. Dr. Fujimoto is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.


Jay S. Duker, MD is the Director of the New England Eye Center (NEEC) and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, MA. He has published over 280 papers and is the editor of 8 books.