Celebration Profiles – May 30-June 2
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…
Izdihar Salman
Izdihar is a a vision science student from Irbid, Jordan. She received her Bachelors in Optometry from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), Jordan, and her Masters Degree in Optometry from University of New South Wales, Australia. Izdihar worked for more than 13 years’ in JUST clinics and she examined more than 5 thousand children with Amblyopia, Binocular Vision deficits and Visual Processing deficits. She was working hard to treat these deficits for them, but she always had a feeling that she needed to do more to recover their full sights. She hopes to continue her studies in Vision Therapy, by improving the treatment methods used for patients that suffer from Amblyopia, Binocular Vision Deficits and Visual Processing Deficits. She hopes, when she graduates from UC Berkeley, to pass her knowledge and research experience to her Optometry Students in Jordan, and then work together to develop the Optometry field in her country and the Middle East. Also, she hopes to discover a new treatment method to restore vision for those suffering from vision loss. She loves traveling and visiting historical sites. On the weekends, she prefers to spend her time with family and relatives.
Horace B. Barlow, MD
Horace Basil Barlow (born 1921) is the son of Sir Alan Barlow and Lady Nora Darwin, and thus the great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Horace was educated at Winchester College, England, and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University, England, with a Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and a Bachelor of Surgery (BChir). He graduated from Harvard University, Massachusetts, with a Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1946. Dr. Barlow was a Fellow at Trinity College between 1950 and 1954, and a Fellow and Professor of Physiology between 1954 and 1964 at King’s College, Cambridge University, England. From 1964 to 1973 he was Professor of Physiology at the University of California, Berkeley.In his early work (1953), Professor Barlow made a landmark discovery—single nerve cells in the retina of frogs will fire when they “see” a particular configuration of elements (“trigger features”), and that these trigger features relate to the frogs’ survival.
From 1964–67, while at Berkeley Optometry, Dr. Barlow was one of an illustrious group of vision scientists who helped advance the young program in Physiological Optics. Lack of space was a factor leading to Barlow’s accepting an appointment with the Department of Molecular Biology (today called Molecular and Cell Biology) in 1967. Professor Barlow has made numerous original and important contributions in sensory physiology, contributing much to our understanding of how animals see and how sight develops.
He has investigated the role of motion blur in determining the direction of motion of moving images and has also studied the connection between conscious experience and the evolutionary benefits of communication between members of the same species. Barlow’s findings were precursors to the work of Hübel and Wiesel on visual receptive fields in the visual cortex for which they later received the Nobel Prize.
Alexandria Marquez
Alexandria (Alex) Marquez, the school’s Assistant Director of Vision Science & Residency Programs, is a higher education professional that has been in the field for four years. She was born and raised in the Bay Area and received her Bachelor’s degree from Sacramento State University. Before joining the School of Optometry, she worked in the Division of Student Affairs at California College of the Arts. She has experience in both Student Life and International Student Affairs and Programs. Alex is passionate about guiding students through their journey in higher education and helping them find a sense of community. In her free time, Alex enjoys traveling, hanging out at the beach and binge watching reality TV.