Congratulations Dr. Daniel Lee

I have been chatting up with alumni on LinkedIn all week. And to my surprise I found out the great news. Daniel Lee is now Dr. Daniel Lee! He defended his PhD is March. Dr. Lee is an alumni of Adelphi’s physics program. And is an expert on how we see.

I asked him to tell us about what he does and this is what he said:

In a world where people tend to make judgements and decisions based on what they can see, it is not an understatement as to why vision is very important. In fact, there have been studies that determined vision to be the most dominant sense compared to the other sensory modalities. The retina is a thin layer of neuronal cells that are specialized to process visual information arising from a stimulus from a distribution of light reaching the back of the eye. Specifically, the cone photoreceptors are responsible for high resolution and color vision. A monolayer of cells underneath the cones called the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is responsible for maintaining healthy function of the retina and importantly the cones. Current clinical imaging modalities lack the spatial resolution to image individual retinal cells. Furthermore, subtle changes the retina undergoes in vivo as a function of healthy aging is not well defined. This is important to understand as age is the largest risk factor in retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration. By utilizing adaptive optics technology, I conducted the Pittsburgh Investigation of Retinal Aging (PIRA) study. The results from the PIRA study showed significant differences in cone and RPE cell morphometry as a function of age across the retina. I also implemented technological advancements to the adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope, which improved robustness of RPE cell imaging and overall image quality.

Talk about making a difference in the world. He was literally so awesome at what he does, a team in France invited him to work in Paris for a while just share notes! I am so proud of you DR. DANIEL LEE!