Joel S Schuman Editor & Author

Malik Y. Kahook, MD is Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of Clinical and Translational Research in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado. He also directs the glaucoma service and glaucoma fellowship. Dr. Kahook specializes in the medical and surgical treatment of glaucoma and cataracts. He is active within the ophthalmology community, including memberships in the American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Glaucoma Society, American Society of Refractive and Cataract Surgeons, and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Dr. Kahook has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts, abstracts, and book chapters, and is editor of 4 textbooks, including Essentials of Glaucoma Surgery (SLACK Incorporated). He is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Ophthalmology and International Glaucoma Review, among others. He was awarded an American Glaucoma Society Clinician-Scientist Fellowship Award for 2007, as well as the American Glaucoma Society Compliance Grant for 2006, and was named New Inventor of the Year for the University of Colorado in 2009 and Inventor of the Year for 2010. Dr. Kahook received the American Academy of Ophthalmology Achievement Award in 2011. He has filed for more than 12 patents, several of which have been licensed by companies for development and commercialization. He currently serves as a consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration’s Ophthalmic Device Division.

Dr. Kahook completed his residency training at the University of Colorado, Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute in Denver, Colorado, where he was named Chief Resident. He then went on to complete his fellowship in glaucoma from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.     

Joel S. Schuman, MD, FACS is the Eye and Ear Foundation Professor and Chairman of Ophthalmology, the Eye and Ear Institute, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Eye Center. He is also Professor of Bioengineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, and a Founder of the Louis J. Fox Center for Vision Restoration of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Schuman is a native of Roslyn, New York; he graduated from Columbia University (BA, 1980) and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (MD, 1984). Following his internship at New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center (1985), he completed residency training at Medical College of Virginia (1988) and glaucoma fellowship at Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary (clinical 1989; research 1990), where he was a Heed Fellow. After just over a year on the Harvard faculty, he moved to the New England Medical Center, Tufts University, to co-found the New England Eye Center in 1991, where he was Residency Director and Glaucoma and Cataract Service Chief. In 1998, he became Professor of Ophthalmology, and Vice Chair in 2001.    

Dr. Schuman and his colleagues were the first to identify a molecular marker for human glaucoma, as published in Nature Medicine in 2001. He has been continuously funded by the National Eye Institute as a principal investigator since 1995, is principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study novel glaucoma diagnostics, and is co-investigator of NIH grants for research into novel optical diagnostics and short pulse laser surgery and for advanced imaging in glaucoma. He is an inventor of optical coherence tomography (OCT), used world-wide for ocular diagnostics. Dr. Schuman has published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, has authored or edited 8 books, and has contributed more than 50 book chapters.    

In 2002, Dr. Schuman received the Alcon Research Institute Award, as well as the New York Academy of Medicine’s Lewis Rudin Glaucoma Prize. In 2003, he received the Senior Achievement Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology. In 2004, he was elected into the American Society for Clinical Investigation. In 2006, he received the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Translational Research Award. He was elected to the American Ophthalmological Society in 2008. He received a 2006-2009 American Medical Association Physician’s Recognition Award with Commendation. In 2010, he became a silver Fellow of ARVO. In 2011, Dr. Schuman was the Clinician-Scientist Lecturer of the American Glaucoma Society. In 2012, he received the Carnegie Science Center’s Award in Life Sciences and was a co-recipient of the Champalimaud Award.