OPT Visionary - Fall 2016

COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY • 33 Cristina Llerena Law, O.D., M.S., FAAO (Dipl.), associate professor, who graduated from NSUCO in 2006, completed her residency training in pediatric optometry at the State Uni- versity of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry. In addition to serving as a didactic and clinical faculty member at SUNY from 2007 through 2015, she completed a Ph.D. in Vision Science from SUNY’s Graduate Center for Vision Research in 2016. Her responsibilities as an NSUCO faculty member include acting as the instructor of record for Ophthalmic Optics I and II and providing clinical supervision of the interns and resident optometric physicians at The Eye Care Institute. With the help of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) K23 grant, Law devotes most of her time to her primary area of research—neuroplasticity in adult amblyopia. She is the principal investigator of several investigator-initiated studies involving the efficacy of binocular training (perceptual learning) techniques and varied-contrast dichoptic training for adults with amblyopia and strabis- mus. She also serves as a co-primary investigator for an NIH-funded clinical trial involving adult strabismus. Law has published and lectured exten- sively on her research and her clinical experience in pediatrics and pediatric neuro-ophthalmic disease. She is the recipient of several awards recognizing her work in the field, including the 2014 Mike Daley Ezell Fellowship, the 2015 John N. Schoen Ezell Fellowship, and the 2014 Minnie Flaura Turner Memorial Award for Impaired Vision Research. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and a Diplomate of the American Board of Optometry. u Chandra V. Mickles, O.D., M.S., FAAO, associate professor, received her Doctor of Optometry degree from the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry in 2009, graduating in the top 10 percent of her class. After completing her residency training in cornea and contact lenses at the University of Alabam—Birmingham (UAB) School of Optometry, she earned a Master of Science in Vision Science from UAB. She then completed a postdoctoral optometric research fellowship at the Birmingham VA Medical Center in Alabama. Prior to joining NSUCO, Mickles served as an assist- ant professor at the University of the Incarnate Word Rosenberg School of Optometry (UIWRSO) in San Antonio, Texas. At UIWRSO, she served as a didactic and clinical faculty member, as well as the chief of the Cornea and Contact Lens Service. Mickles, who has lectured nation- ally, serves as a principal invest- igator of research investigations and has pub- lished on a variety of topics, including contact lenses and dry eye disease. In addition to being a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, she has authored a textbook chapter in the fourth edition of Bennett and Henry’s Clinical Manual of Contact Lenses and received the George Mertz New Educator Travel Award from the Associa- tion of Optometric Contact Lens Educators. u Cristina Llerena Law, O.D., M.S., FAAO (Dipl.) Chandra V. Mickles, O.D., M.S., FAAO