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Roger Li, Ph.D.

Roger Li
Associate Professor
Principal Investigator, Vision Enhancement Laboratory
wli@nova.edu
Office: (954)262-1436

Roger Li joined NSUCO in late 2021. Dr. Li completed his clinical and research training at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Optometry (HKPolyU). Li pursued further post-doctoral research training at the same institute and then at the University of Houston College of Optometry (UHCO). Prior to joining NSUCO, Li worked at the University of California-Berkeley School of Optometry (UCBSO) as a research scientist from 2001-2021.

At NSUCO, Dr. Li is the Principal Investigator of the Vision Enhancement Laboratory. As a clinician scientist, Li has a long-standing research interest in clinical vision science - from amblyopia, spatial and pattern vision, myopic control, aging eye, visual electrophysiology to brain imaging. His research programs have been continuously supported by various funding sponsors, including Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB, USA), Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF, Food and Health Bureau, HK), General Research Fund (GRF, Research Grants Council, HK) and National Eye Institute (USA). The laboratory has also been funded by the President's Research Grants and Health Professions Division Research Grants with NSU.

Dr. Li has recently received a prestigious Walt and Lilly Disney Award for Amblyopia Research from Research to Prevent Blindness (USA; 2022) to recognizes his research contributions. Over the past two decades, Li and his colleagues have invented numerous breakthrough treatments for restoring vision in patients with amblyopia (a.k.a. lazy eye). In particular, his earlier experiments using video games to improve amblyopic vision have attracted global attention from mass media. With the support of RPB, the research team is currently working towards developing new stereoscopic treatments for recovering 3D vision in amblyopia.

The research laboratory has published in numerous flagship scientific journals, including Nature Neuroscience, PLoS Biology, and Ophthalmology. In 2014-2022, the team members have been awarded a total of 17 competitive travel grants from the American Academy of Optometry and Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology for presenting their research discoveries.

The ultimate goals of his research are to study human visual perception and the underlying processing mechanisms, develop new treatments for amblyopia, advance the understanding of neural plasticity of the visual brain, and translate the knowledge gained into developing clinical techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of ocular/visual disorders.

 

Scholarly and University Services

To assist the scientific community, Dr. Li has served on the Editorial Boards of several ophthalmology and neuroscience journals and has handled numerous research articles for more than 40 journals. Additionally, he has been frequently selected to evaluate research grant proposals for several extramural funding sponsors: Food and Health Bureau (HK), Research Grants Council (HK), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Canada), and Research into Ageing (UK).

At the University level, Li serves on the Faculty Research Advisory Council. At the College level, he collaborates with clinical faculty to develop grant proposals. He was appointed as an external PhD examiner to the University of New South Wales School of Optometry and Vision Science (Australia) in 2011 and engaged in a HMRF research fellowship training scheme from 2018 to 2020 (Food and Health Bureau, HK).

 

Representative Publications

  1. Li RW, et al. (2018) Improving adult amblyopic vision with stereoscopic 3D video games. Ophthalmology
  2. Li RW, et al. (2011) Video game play induces plasticity in the visual system of adults with amblyopia, Public Library of Science Biology, 9, e1001135
  3. Li RW, Levi DM & Klein SA (2004) Perceptual learning improves efficiency by re-tuning the “template” for position discrimination. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 178-183

(*** full list)

 

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