Eli Peli, MSc, OD, is the recipient of the 2018 Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award from Harvard Medical School. He will receive the award during a ceremony at Harvard Medical School on April 30, 2018.
The Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award was established to recognize faculty from Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HMS/HSDM) who have made significant achievements in moving the Schools toward being a diverse and inclusive community. An advisory committee, with representatives from HMS/HSDM and the affiliated hospitals, carefully reviewed and discussed each nominee and recommended this year's Diversity Award recipients.
Dr. Peli created a diverse and inclusive community by recruiting people with visual impairments to work and train in his laboratory, actively promoting their careers, visibility, and advancement in the HMS and vision research communities. As an expert in low vision rehabilitation, Dr. Peli is able to design and implement the adaptations that are needed to enable people with impaired vision to effectively function within the laboratory. He also works with other researchers at HMS to create inclusive environments by encouraging them to employ such adaptations in their own laboratories.
Dr. Peli is a Professor of Ophthalmology and co-director of the Mobility Enhancement and Vision Rehabilitation Center of Excellence in the Harvard Department of Ophthalmology. His research spans the interface between engineering and ophthalmic/vision research. Specifically, he tries to understand how we see in the context of low vision rehabilitation.