May 24, 2000

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The School of Optometry at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) will hold its Doctoral Convocation and Hooding Ceremony for graduating optometry school students at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 27, at the Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center. The Convocation honors 40 graduates of the class of 2000.

This year's speaker is Karla Zadnik, O.D., Ph.D., the Glenn A. Fry Professor in Optometry and Physiological Optics and a faculty member at Ohio State University College of Optometry.

Zadnik received her O.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley School of Optometry. She was on the clinical faculty of the University of California, Davis School of Medicine for 14 years. She became the Glenn A. Fry Professor in 1999.

Dr. Zadnik is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, a Diplomate of its Section on Cornea and Contact Lenses, chairman of the academy's Membership Committee and Section on Cornea and Contact Lenses and a member of the American Optometric Association's Council on Research. She received the American Optometric Foundation's Glenn A. Fry Award in 1995 and she is the 1998 recipient of the Galileo Award from the American Foundation for Vision Awareness.

Zadnik is the study chairman for two studies funded by the National Eye Institute/National Institutes of Health and the principal investigator of the Clinical Vision Research Development Award grant from NEI at Ohio State.

Zadnik's hundreds of publications in major peer reviewed journals have caused her to be considered by many as the preeminent young scientist in applied vision and optometry.