College of Science

Mahnaz Shahidi, earned her Ph.D. in Atomic and Molecular Physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in retinal imaging, joined the faculty of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at UIC and became the director of the Applied Physics Laboratory. She was promoted to the rank of professor of Physics in Ophthalmology with tenure and joint appointments in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Bioengineering. Shahidi was named Morton F. Goldberg, M.D., FACS Professor of Ophthalmology and served as the vice chair and research director. She was also named 2012 Inventor of the Year and 2013 Faculty of the Year in the College of Medicine at UIC. In 2016, Shahidi joined the Department of Ophthalmology at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, where she is a professor of Ophthalmology, Riffenburgh professor in Glaucoma and vice chair for Translational Research. Her research program is focused on the development of optical imaging technologies for quantitative assessment of eye diseases. The novel imaging techniques developed in her research laboratory have provided valuable tools to study pathophysiology and improve diagnostic evaluation of ocular and systemic diseases. Shahidi has received funding support for her research program from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.