PhD Candidate, School of Visual Communication
Birmingham City University - UK

Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School.
Director, The Laboratory for Visual Neuroplasticity. Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Schepens Eye Research Institute.
Staff Optometrist, Vision Rehabilitation Service. Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

Lotfi Merabet is a clinician-scientist investigating how the brain adapts to visual impairment. He completed his doctorate degree in neuroscience (University of Montréal) and clinical doctorate in optometry (New England College of Optometry). He then continued his post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. This was followed by a Master’s degree in Public Health (Harvard). In 2010, he joined the clinical and research faculty of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear and his work is currently supported by the NIH/National Eye Institute. He also serves on the Education and CVI Steering Committees of the Perkins School for the Blind, and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Carroll Center for the Blind and the National Braille Press.

Karen received her Master's in Occupational therapy and Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Sciences both from The Ohio State University. She is a clinician scientist and occupational therapist and has been at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital since 2011. Karen is also an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati and a faculty member for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disability (LEND) Program. Clinically, Karen evaluates and treats children with neurodevelopmental disorders with a large focus on infants and children with cerebral palsy and/or cortical visual impairment. Karen’s research focus is to develop research and clinical programs for prevention and early treatment for infants at high-risk for cerebral palsy and those with visual impairment.

Lynn is first and foremost a Mom. Her daughter, Emma, 19, began to benefit from CVI adaptations and interventions at age 15. After learning how profoundly CVI impacts everything in a child’s world and witnessing Emma’s life change after implanting intentional, strategic CVI interventions, Lynn joined the ranks of the crazy CVI Mom and Advocates.
In previous iterations of her life, she was a VP of Production for an educational professional development company, working with organizations such as NASSP, NAESP and the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, and a social entrepreneur for which she received her Chamber’s Businessperson of the Year award. She, along with 2 other wonderfully crazy CVI Moms and Advocates, was honored with the Hall of Fame award in 2019 from the Pediatric Cortical Visual Impairment Society for spearheading the development of the PCVIS.vision website.
When Emma’s life is not shifting their family’s axis, Emma and Lynn’s collaborative efforts to make communication accessible to her through a CVI adapted, custom AAC system can be found at See CVI, Speak AAC (@seeCVIspeakAAC).

Chair of Childhood Visual Impairment
Moray House School of Education and Sport, IETL
University of Edinburgh - UK

Professor, New England College of Optometry
Optometric Director, NECO Center for Eye Care at Perkins

Dr. Kran earned his Doctor of Optometry (OD) degree from the State University of New York State College of Optometry in 1985 and subsequently completed a vision training residency there. He has practiced in Massachusetts since 1986. Aside from his current academic position at the New England College of Optometry (NECO), he ran a private practice, consulted at astate developmental center and worked at a tertiary care pediatric ophthalmology practice. Professor Kran has been on the faculty of NECO since 2001. He currently lectures in the following courses: Binocular and Accommodative Anomalies, Pediatric Optometry and Low Vision.
For the past 21 years, Dr. Kran, in his role as the Optometric Director of the NECO Center for Eye Care at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, has supervised students and residents from the College in their clinical care of patients with visual and other impairments. This clinic is also the base for his research and collaboration with Drs. Mayer and Ross at NECO and others in the Boston area performing cutting edge research on Cerebral Vision Impairments (CVIs).
As part of working with this population, Dr. Kran’s current research interests involve developing appropriate diagnostic vision tests for individuals with disabilities, understanding and developing a database of the vision-related outcomes of low incidence conditions, and better understanding and sharing the diversity of presentation of CVI. Most recently, after several years of research and collaboration primarily with Dr Mayer as well as several former residents, preferential looking contrast cards (Mayer-Kran Double Happy Contrast cards) were developed, results published and are now available through Precision Vision.
Dr. Kran has lectured extensively in North America as well as in Europe, the Middle East, India and China. He has also worked and consulted with eye clinics and schools for the blind in many of these same areas who care for individuals with visual and other impairments. His work has been recognized statewide, regionally and nationally by service providers, state agencies and professional organizations.
Dr. Kran is a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and an associate member of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development.

Paediatric ophthalmologist
Emeritus Professor of Visual Science
Glasgow Caledonian University

Professor Gordon Dutton is an Emeritus Professor of Visual Science at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. His current special interests include medical education and cerebral visual impairment (CVI).

He has lectured as a Keynote Speaker on a range of ophthalmic topics in relation to pediatric ophthalmology, both nationally and internationally, and he is going to address the topic of how disorders of the posterior parietal lobes of the brain fundamentally impair vision, and how we can help those affected.

Deafblind Specialist
Director of CVI Research and Development
The CVI Center at Perkins School for the Blind

Ellen has worked for 44 years serving students of all ages with visual impairments, students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities and students with deafblindness. In 2008, Ellen was named National Teacher of the Year for Children with Multiple Disabilities by the Council of Schools for the Blind (COSB). She teaches Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment: Assessment and Education in the Vision Studies graduate program at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
In a Perkins/University of Massachusetts Boston collaboration, she co-developed the five course University of Massachusetts Boston CVI Certification program in 2018.
In 2014, She created a blog about CVI that currently has over 250,000 views from 126,000 visitors worldwide. She hopes blogging and lecturing will identify students with CVI and will generate more referrals for students with CVI. Identification can lead to assessment and service to children so they can improve their visual recognition skills: cviteacher.wordpress.com

Upside Systems Therapy

Jacy VerMaas is a board-certified pediatric occupational therapist and recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. During her graduate studies, she used a combination of neuroimaging techniques, biomechanics, and clinical assessments to evaluate visual and somatosensory processing in children with cerebral palsy. Jacy is a graduate of the University of Southern California (M.A., occupational therapy) and the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (B.A., psychology). She has clinical expertise facilitating interventions with children who have autism, cerebral palsy, developmental coordination disorders, feeding problems, hearing loss and visual impairment, gained from her clinical work in hospitals, schools, and clinics in Southern California and Nebraska over past 20 years. Her research interests focus on understanding the dynamic interrelationships between neurophysiology, cognition, and behavior that underlie the functional challenges in individuals with disabilities. The goal of this research is to inform the development of effective intervention strategies that ultimately help individuals live more productive and meaningful lives.

Dr. Melinda Chang grew up in southern California and attended USC for undergraduate studies, graduating summa cum laude and double-majoring in Neuroscience and Kinesiology. She then completed medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was inducted into their AOA Honor Society. Subsequently, she returned to southern California and completed ophthalmology residency, pediatric ophthalmology fellowship, and neuro-ophthalmology fellowship at the Stein and Doheny Eye Institutes at UCLA. Currently, she practices pediatric neuro-ophthalmology, general pediatric ophthalmology, and strabismus surgery at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles (CHLA). She has a particular interest in CVI and is the principal investigator of a research study using eye tracking for visual assessment in children with CVI. Together with Dr. Mark Borchert and Christine Roman-Lantzy, she is also involved in a research study validating the CVI Range at CHLA.

Nicola McDowell is a lecturer in Specialist Teaching in the Institute of Education at Massey University, New Zealand. Nicola acquired cerebral visual impairment as a result of a brain injury as a teenager and is using her own experience to help improve life for children with CVI around the world. In 2020 she completed a Ph.D. where she developed a practice framework for supporting children with cerebral visual impairment.

Deputy Director
National Eye Institute

Santa Tumminia was selected as the NEI Deputy Director in November 2018, and served as Acting Director, NEI, from 2019-2020. In these roles, she provided executive leadership and scientific expertise on NEI policies and initiatives, strategic and organizational leadership, research oversight and priority setting and financial management. She has expertise in a range of vision research issues and has provided leadership on NIH-wide programs in genetics and genomic medicine, behavioral science, angiogenesis, nanomedicine, translational science and rare diseases. In addition, she temporarily assumed the role of Acting NEI Scientific Director in 2019, managing the NEI Intramural Research Program.

Dr. Tumminia earned a Ph.D. in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1987. In her postdoctoral training, she examined the protein-nucleic acid interactions involved in ribosome assembly at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, Department of Biochemistry, Hoffman La-Roche, Inc. Dr. Tumminia joined the NEI Laboratory of Mechanisms of Ocular Diseases in 1991. Her research focus was on the mechanisms of ocular diseases, specifically, glaucoma and cataract formation. She studied cataract formation and tested the efficacy of anti-cataract agents. She also developed a model system to mimic the effects of glaucoma. She then transitioned to the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB), the largest non-government funder of retinal disease research. At FFB, she held several positions eventually becoming Director of Grants and Awards overseeing the entire grant portfolio of the foundation.

Dr. Tumminia returned to NEI in the Office of the Director in 2003 where she developed policies to foster strategic partnerships with stakeholders including industry, patient advocacy groups, and individuals impacted by vision loss. She has been key in formulating policies on new basic and clinical research concepts and initiatives, such as the NEI Audacious Goals Initiative. She provided NEI leadership on stem cell policies and other initiatives, such as the National Ophthalmic Disease Genotyping and Phenotyping Network or eyeGENE® and the Age-Related Macular Degeneration Integrative Biology Initiative designed to correlate AMD disease phenotype and cellular endophenotypes with patient genetics. While NEI Acting Director, she stood up the NEI Office of Data Science and Health Informatics as well as the Office of Vision Health and Population Science whose focus is on public health.

Dr. Tumminia has received numerous awards including multiple NIH Director’s Awards for the NIH-wide Strategic Plan Working Group, and for leading the eyeGENE® Initiative. In 2018, she received the NIH Director’s Award in Mentoring. Her efforts led to increasing the number of female tenure-track investigators in the NEI intramural program. She has also supported workplace diversity through the NEI’s Diversity in Vision Research and Ophthalmology (DIVRO) training program and is developing an NEI Strategic Plan on Diversity.

Christine received her degrees in Elementary Education and Special Education from Michigan State University. She worked as a teacher of the visually impaired in Western Pennsylvania for 17 years. She earned her Master’s degree in Infant Development/ Medically Fragile Infants and training in Orientation and Mobility from The University of Pittsburgh where she also taught in the Vision Studies Program for 12 years. Christine also received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. She was the Director of the Graduate Program in Visual Impairment at Marshall University in West Virginia. She was the first Project Leader for CVI at The American Printing House for the Blind.

Christine is the Chief of Practice of The Pediatric View Program at The Children’s Home in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where she has conducted evaluations of over 1000 children who have CVI. Christine has provided workshops and consultations across the United States and internationally. In addition to her work in visual impairment, Christine has been a neonatal and high-risk infant development specialist since 1990.

Her book, Cortical Visual Impairment: An Approach to Assessment and Intervention was released by The American Foundation for the Blind in 2007 and received the C. Warren Bledsoe Award in 2008.

Deafblind Specialist
Assistant Director of Assessment and Interventions
The CVI Center at Perkins School for the Blind

Marguerite Tibaudo, M.Ed, TVI, is the CVI Assistant Director of Assessment and Intervention at Perkins School for the Blind. Marguerite holds a Master of Education degree from Boston College in Severe Special Education with a specialization in Deafblindness and a Master of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston in Vision Studies. She additionally has completed the CVI Certification Program through UMass Boston, the first graduate certificate program focused on the specialized needs of students with CVI.

Director, Eye Birth Defects and Eye Technology Institute
The Vision Center at Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Associate Professor of Clinical Surgery
Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles

Dr. Legge has been interested in an improved understanding of children with CVI since beginning his practice in 1991. This interest led to the formulation of the American Conference on Pediatric Cortical Visual Impairment, which has convened 8 times since 2012. He has served as the Program Director for each of these meeting. It is his belief that we need to first establish an interdisciplinary knowledge base on CVI. This is being accomplished via the annual meetings and scientific publications. The next phase is to design scientific inquiry that will answer questions regarding the pathophysiology, epidemiology, diagnosis and therapy of brain-based vision loss in children.
Dr. Legge practices pediatric and adult neuro-ophthalmology, and strabismus surgery at the Truhlsen Eye Institute. He serves as Assistant Professor and Clinical Medical Director at the Institute.