Title: Assistant Professor of Optometry (Retired)
Company: Nova Southeastern University
Location: Fredonia, New York, United States
Michael Craig Barris, PhD, Retired Assistant Professor of Optometry at Nova Southeastern University, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Educators for dedication, achievements, and leadership in optometry and higher education.
Inspired to delve into the medical field due to his experience working in psychiatric hospitals as an undergraduate student, Dr. Barris was intent on conducting research as a profession in the effort to aid more individuals on a larger scale. Attending the University of Rochester, he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1966, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy from the City University of New York in 1976. From there, he completed a fellowship in ophthalmology at the University of Florida from 1976 to 1979. During his doctoral studies, he was also an adjunct lecturer of psychology at Queens College for five years. From 1980 to 1981, he was an adjunct instructor of ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Later in his career, Dr. Barris served as an assistant professor of optometry at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico from 1983 to 1988. Thereafter, he served Queens College as a research assistant of psychology in 1989 and Michigan State University in East Lansing as an assistant professor of internal medicine and visiting assistant research professor of biochemistry between 1990 and 1994. From 1995 until his retirement in 1998, he was the assistant professor of optometry at Nova Southeastern University. He accrued 27 fruitful years in academia. Civically involved as well, he has been a trustee of the Village of Fredonia, NY, since 2018.
Among the notable highlights of his career, Dr. Barris is most renowned for developing the Laser Speckle Visual Stimulator of evoked cortical potentials, discovering that the visual sensitivity of women increases on the days basal body temperature rises, and confirming that the electro-oculogram Arden ratio is inversely proportional to ocular malignant melanoma mass. He is also proud of the 43 scientific papers he has written throughout his tenure, which have been highly cited by other scholars. Over the course of his career, Dr. Barris has additionally contributed articles to professional journals, including Documenta Ophthalmologica, the Annals of Neurology, the Journal of Physiology, the American Journal of Physiology and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
As a testament to his success, Dr. Barris was honored with a National Research Service Fellowship through the National Eye Institute and a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship through Fight-for-Sight, as well as an institutional research grant through the American Cancer Society and a grant from the National Society to Prevent Blindness. Impressively, he was highlighted in the first edition of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering in 1992.
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