Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology Low Vision & Visual Rehabilitation Service The Wilmer Eye Institute The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Dr. Ava Katherine Bittner received her Optometry degree from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia, and her PhD in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.  She completed a clinical research post-doctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, and then joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor.  Dr. Bittner's research is examining the relationships between psychosocial factors and day to day variations in vision or photopsias among visually impaired patients with retinal degeneration or glaucoma, and she aims to design and conduct clinical trials involving interventions for these patients in the future.  Her research interests include the psychophysical assessment of the healthy and diseased visual system, both to increase the understanding of this system and to develop tools to monitor disease and therapeutic outcomes.  She is also interested in complementary and alternative approaches to sight preservation and disease/symptom attenuation in retinal degenerations, and collaborates with researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Mind-Body Research and department of Behavioral Science.

Read Dr. Bittner's CV