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Lei Liu, Ph.D.

DEPARTMENT OF OPTOMETRY


Lei Liu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Optometry

Contact Information:
Academic Office - (205) 996-6627

Physical Address:
527 Henry Peters Building
1716 University Boulevard

Mailing Address:
HPB 527
1530 Third Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35294-0010
 



Biographical Sketch:

Education:
Ph.D. – University of California at Berkely

M.S. - Graduate School of Academia Sinica, Beijing, China

B.S. - Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Ph.D. - UAB School of Optometry / Vision Science Research Center

Secondary Appointments:

Department of Vision Science, School of Optometry

Personal:

Previous Hobbies: 
 

  • Skiing (haven't gone up the slope since I cracked my shoulder bone in Santa Fe in 1997 during a non-invasive meeting).
  • Bicycling (not enjoy it as much since being side-swept by a taxi in New York in 2000).
  • Photography (not taking it as seriously as before, after 3 of my cameras were stolen on an overnight train from Saltsburg to Budapest in 2004).
  • Hiking (have to give a second thought about taking a long one after I injured my left knee in a trip to Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain) in China).
  • Opera (Oh, well...)

Current Hobbies:
 

  • Work.

Future Hobbies (assuming no revolutionary changes from current ways of doing things):
 

  • Golf (?)
  • Driving from place to place in an RV (will it be an acceptable activity on other continents?).
  • Museum hopping (hope more will comply with the American Disability Act).
  • Reading or listening to books (hope somebody can write as funny as Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut, or as witty as O'Henry, or as wild as Ken Kesey and Jack Karovac).

Scholarly Activity:

Research:
Low vision visual function assessment: Developing new clinical methods that can be used to evaluate visual functions in low vision patients.

Low vision rehabilitation: Developing new methods to improve mobility, reading and activities of daily living of low vision patients.

Detection and prevention of retinal diseases: Developing new clinical methods to detect visual function changes associated early age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. Developing and field-testing telemedicine protocols for ocular disease screening in underserved areas.

Physiological optics and visual psychophysics: Seeking a better understanding of how human subject recognize complex visual patterns, in particular, Roman letters and Chinese characters. Developing instruments to assess visual acuity and reading in Chinese-reading populations. 
 

Recent Publications:
Liu, L., Kuyk, T. K. and Fuhr, P. S. W. (2007). Visual Search Training In Subjects With Severe Visual Impairment. Vision Research, in print.

Jun-Yun Zhang, Ting Zhang, Feng Xue, Lei Liu, Cong Yu (2007). Legibility Variations of Chinese Characters and Implications for Visual Acuity Measurement. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 48, 2383-2390.

Fuhr, P. S. W., Liu, L., Kuyk, T. K. (2007). Relationships between feature search and mobility Performance in persons with severe visual impairment. Optometry and Vision Science, 84, 393-400.

Kuyk, T. K., Liu, L., and Fuhr, P. S. W. (2005). Feature Search in Persons with Severe Visual Impairment. Vision Research, 45, 3224-3234.

Liu, L. & Cho, J. (2002). "The effect of pixel nonlinearity on CRT based visual acuity tests", Optometry and Vision Science, 79, 724-734.