The Provost’s Lecture Series continues on Friday, March 28, noon-2 p.m., with a presentation by Alexandra Benavente-Perez, assistant clinical professor at SUNY College of Optometry and Andrea Dziubek, assistant professor of applied mathematics, entitled “Modeling ocular blood flow to help prevent blindness.” The presentation will be held in the Student Center theater.

Abstract

The retina is the innermost layer of the eye. Its function is to receive and process the visual information that first passes through the optic surfaces located anterior in the eye. The retina has a high metabolic rate, and it is considered as one of the tissues with the largest oxygen consumption per unit weight. In this talk we will learn about the vessels that nourish the retina, how we use mathematical modeling and simulation in our research to describe the vasculature that feeds the retina of a healthy eye, how it changes with disease, and how we can use the model to understand ocular health and disease.

Benavente-Perez holds the following degrees: Ph.D. in Vision Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK; M.S. in Investigative Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, UK; B.S. in Optometry and Optics, College of Medicine and Sciences, Valladolid, Spain. Her research interests include Visual control of eye growth; Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma: common vascular risk factors; and biometric and physiological factors in human ocular perfusion in the healthy and myopic eye.

Dziubek earned a Ph.D. in Energy and Process Engineering from Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany, in 2006. Before joining SUNYIT, she held teaching and research positions in Indiana at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Her research area is modeling and simulation of problems in fluid dynamics and elasticity on curved domains, using structure preserving numerical methods and finite element methods. She has worked on industrial and biomedical problems, and enjoys contributing to the next generation of tools and methods in computational modeling.

The Provost’s Lecture Series allows SUNYIT faculty and guest lecturers to share their research interests and activities with colleagues and the community.