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Cynthia
Owsley was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and was raised in Philadelphia
and southeastern Connecticut. She received her B.A. degree
from Wheaton College, Massachusetts (1975) majoring in Psychology
and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received the Ph.D.
from Cornell University (1980) in Psychology, concentrating
in the area of perceptual development. Following graduate
school, Dr. Owsley did post-doctoral training in vision and
aging at Northwestern University (1979-82) and also in epidemiology
at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1998) where she
received the M.S.P.H.
Cynthia
Owsley is Professor of Ophthalmology in the School of Medicine
at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), is Director
of the Clinical Research Unit in the Department of Ophthalmology,
and also serves as Co-Director of the Center for Research
on Applied Gerontology at UAB. Dr. Owsley has directed several
projects funded by the National Institute on Aging and the
National Eye Institute on aging-related vision impairment,
eye disease, and their impact on everyday life. Her research
program has been continuously funded by the National Institutes
of Health since 1983. She served as the Chair of the Planning
Panel on Vision Impairment and Rehabilitation for the National
Eye Institute’s National Plan for 1999-2003, and served
as a member of the Panel for the 2004-2009 Plan and 1993-1998
Plan. She is currently a member of the Editorial Boards of
Vision Research and Current Eye Research, is a Fellow of the
American Psychological Association and the Gerontological
Society of America, is the recipient of the Glenn A. Fry Award
from the American Optometric Foundation and the Bartimaeus
Award from the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology, and is
Senior Scientific Investigator for Research to Prevent Blindness,
Inc. For the National Research Council, Dr. Owsley was previously
a member of the Committee on Vision and Committee on Disability
Determination for Individuals with Visual Impairments, and
is currently Chairperson of the Committee for Safe Mobility
of Older Persons of the Transportation Research Board. She
is a consulting member of the Food and Drug Administration’s
Panel on Ophthalmic Devices and a member of the External Advisory
Committee of the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence
Center at UCLA. Dr. Owsley is married to Dr. Michael Sloane,
is the mother of two, and resides in Mountain Brook, Alabama
with her family. |
