Shlomit Schaal, MD, PhD, MHCM
- Senior Associate Dean for Health Strategies, UMass Chan Medical School
- Professor and Chair, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences
Dr. Schaal earned her undergraduate, medical and doctoral degrees from Technion Institute of Technology in Israel, graduating as the valedictorian of both her undergraduate and medical school classes, before going on to an ophthalmology residency at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center and fellowships in vitreoretinal research and vitreoretinal surgery at the University of Louisville.
As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Schaal specializes in cutting-edge medical and surgical treatment of diabetic retinopathy and other complex vitreoretinal diseases. She believes early detection is critical to preventing blindness.
Her research team developed a novel automatic algorithm for the early detection of microscopic changes in the retina of people with diabetes, that may indicate the beginning of diabetic eye disease. She's the inventor of several US patents, some of which have been licensed and commercialized.
In the following video, Dr. Schaal describes her translational research in collaboration with bioengineers to analyze images of scans of the retina.
Developing methods for early detection of diabetic retinopathy
