Randy Kardon M.D. Ph.D.

Dr. Randy Kardon is a tenured Professor of Ophthalmology, who served as Director of the Neuro-ophthalmology Service and Neuro-ophthalmology Fellowship Director for over 20 years, and has been faculty at the University of Iowa and Veterans Administration Health Care System for 36 years. He holds the Pomerantz Family Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology and is Director of the Iowa City Veterans Administration Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Visual Loss, competitively funded by the Rehabilitation, Research and Development Division of the Veterans Administration for the last 15 years. The VA Vision Center grant, recently renewed for a fourth 5-year cycle, receives $6.2M in core funding. Dr. Kardon has published over 20 chapters, co-authored a textbook, and has published over 275 peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Kardon has been fortunate to have had continuous Federal grant funding for 36 years and is presently the Principal Investigator and Co-investigator on 5 major grants externally funded by the Veterans Administration and NIH. Dr. Kardon currently teaches and mentors undergraduate students, medical students, residents and fellows and has received a University of Iowa Collegiate Teaching Award for his teachings and commitment to education. His main areas of current research interest include use of facial features to diagnose and monitor eye and neurological disorders, pupil and eyelid physiology and its clinical application, diagnosis and treatment of light sensitivity and traumatic brain injury, ocular blood flow, artificial intelligence to quantify and display spatial patterns of nerve loss in the retina and therapeutic interventions for preserving vision in blinding eye diseases. Dr. Kardon currently investigates structure-function relationships in the visual system using optical coherence tomography (OCT) and deep learning, ocular blood flow using laser speckle flowgraphy, image analysis, and MRI. Dr. Kardon is actively involved in the development of telemedicine tools for objectively evaluating the status of the visual and neurological systems for testing in remote locations and home testing.