Celebration Profiles – October 2-6

In honor of our centennial anniversary, we are featuring members of our optometry community — past and present — each day of 2023!

See below for this week’s profiles.

This Week, We Are Celebrating…

Susana Chung, OD, PhD

Research in her lab focuses on the understanding of how the visual system works in people with normal vision, as well as in people with uncorrectable subnormal vision (visual impairment). Uncorrectable sub-normal vision can occur as a result of an eye disease (e.g., age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of visual impairment in the US for people over the age of 65), or even in the absence of an eye disease (amblyopia, or “lazy eye”).

In her lab, Dr. Chung combines various non-invasive techniques to study vision of people with normal or impaired vision. These techniques include standard (e.g., signal detection theory) and more contemporary psychophysical methods (e.g., reversed-correlation method), retinal imaging using Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope combined with psychophysical tasks, and functional magnetic brain imaging (fMRI).

The ultimate goals of the lab’s research program are to understand the various limiting factors on visual performance in people with visual impairment, and to devise methods, devices or rehabilitative strategies to improve the functional vision of these people, thereby improving their quality of life.

Arthur J. Jampolsky, OD, MD, FACS

Dr. Jampolsky has been recognized as one of the top-three strabismus surgeons in the world. Many of his patients seek his advice and treatment after having already undergone less successful strabismus surgery by others. He was often the specialist whom many optometrists and ophthalmologists turned to when they had exhausted their options or capabilities. These referrals involved some of the most complicated strabismus cases, including thyroid myopathy, Duan’s Syndrome, and repeat surgeries following the efforts of other surgeons.

Among his achievements, Dr. Jampolsky developed a technique for adjustable sutures in strabismus surgery, allowing for final adjustments of extraocular muscle lengths after surgery. His accomplishments did not end with strabismus surgery. Dr. Jampolsky was also extensively involved in vision research and instructing ophthalmology residents and fellows. He has worked with many optometrists from Berkeley Optometry, including Anthony Adams, Gunilla Hægerstrom-Portnoy, Merton Flom, Allan Freid, Ian Bailey, and David Grisham. He was especially interested in the effects of drugs and disease on the retina, conducting many research projects in this area. He also investigated and defined the characteristics of infantile esotropia by looking at motion detectors in the visual cortex.

Terence Tyson, MS

Shortly after completing his MS, he converted to a full-time research engineer and civil servant (federal employee) at NASA, a position that he currently still holds. At NASA, he works on a wide array of problems in human-systems integration, spanning various aerospace systems and operational concepts in both space and aeronautics (e.g., crewed missions to Mars, drone delivery operations). He enjoys working on problems related to visuomotor control and the limits of human vision. He would also like to pick up skills in computer vision and image processing applied to eye tracking, and to make eye-tracking improvements on devices, such as an iPad or VR headset, for robust field-deployable eye-tracking tests that measure distinct phenomena of sensorimotor control.

He would like to improve existing eye-tracking algorithms for robust detection and specificity of oculomotor and/or vestibular disorders. He also has a general interest in fundamental research in visuomotor control and visual information processing. He would like to start his own lab in computational vision at NASA and perhaps foster a strong collaboration between Berkeley’s School of Optometry and NASA’s human factors community. His hobbies include music (playing the guitar and piano), playing go (board game), hiking, badminton, cooking, and reading (fiction, philosophy, psychology, history).

Siu G. Wong, OD, MPH

Jiayun (Peter) Wang, PhD

He is interested in exploring the connection between computer vision and human vision. He believes the interdisciplinary environment in the Vision Science Program provides the finest training in developing vision scientists with valuable insights from diversified backgrounds and perspectives. He is enthusiastic about researching data-driven computational methods for understanding, modeling, and recreating the visual world around us. Whether in academia or industry, his dream is to work in a highly-motivated research group aiming at cutting-edge computational vision problems. He plays badminton, goes to the gym and swims weekly. He also enjoys hiking, traveling, rock climbing and tennis.