Karla Zadnik, OD, PhD

COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Ohio State University College of Optometry has named Karla Zadnik, OD, PhD its fifth dean effective June 1, 2014. Zadnik is the first female to be appointed dean of Ohio State University.

Zadnik, who is the Glenn A. Fry Professor in Optometry and Physiological Optics at Ohio State University College of Optometry, is the immediate past president of the American Academy of Optometry (AAO), having served a decade as its Research Committee chair in the 1990s. She is a diplomate and past chairman of the Academy’s Section on Cornea, Contact Lenses and Refractive Technology (CCLRT); has chaired the American Optometric Association’s (AOA) Council on Research since 2000; and has overseen the AOA/AAO-sponsored Summer Invitational Research Institute for several years.

She also served The National Institutes of Health/National Eye Institute as a principal investigator and study chairman on two large multicenter cohort studies and served as the National Eye Institute’s National Advisory Eye Council from 2000 to 2004.

Throughout her career, Zadnik has been recognized for a variety of awards, including the American Optometric Foundation’s Glenn A. Fry Award, the Warren G. and Ruth P. Morris Optometrist of the Year Award from the Ohio Optometric Association, the CCLRT’s Max Schapero Memorial Lecturer Award, the AOA’s Contact Lens and Cornea Section’s Donald R. Korb Award for Excellence, an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the Illinois College of Optometry, and the Alumnus of the Year Award and the Merton C. Flom Teaching Award, both from the University of California, Berkeley School of Optometry.




Additionally, she was selected by The Ohio State University in 2010 as a Distinguished Scholar, the first faculty member from the College of Optometry to receive that award.

Her preceding professional experience and optometric education were all within the University of California, where she received her undergraduate education at UC Santa Barbara, her academic degrees from the UC Berkeley School of Optometry and was a faculty member at the UC Davis department of ophthalmology for 14 years.

According to Zadnik, her career “has been highlighted by a series of mentors that include Dr. Mark Mannis, now chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at UC Davis; the late Dr. Mert Flom; Dr. Israel Goldberg of Health Research Associates; Dr. Tony Adams, dean emeritus of the UC Berkeley School of Optometry, past AAO president and editor of Optometry and Vision Science; and retiring Ohio State College of Optometry Dean Mel Shipp,” as well as her grandfather, William J. Henry, OD.