Biography
Vijaya K Gothwal graduated in Optometry from the Elite School of Optometry, Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She then obtained her Master’s in Applied Science by Research and a PhD from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia.
While pursuing her PhD, she held a 3-year Freda Bage Fellowship from the Australian Federation of University Women Queensland Inc. This was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship from The Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide, South Australia. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry.
Dr Gothwal played a pivotal role in establishing the Meera and L B Deshapande Centre for Sight Enhancement at LVPEI and has a rich experience of 26 years in treating low vision patients across all age groups.
She has successfully handled cases like albinism, Stargardt’s disease, heredomacular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, adult and congenital glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, macular scars, microphthalmos, coloboma, retinal dystrophies such as cone dystrophy, rod-cone dystrophy, and rod-monochromatism, FEVR, retinopathy of prematurity, retinoblastoma, and amblyopia.
Dr Gothwal has presented widely in various national and international conferences. She has to her credit over 85 publications in peer-reviewed national and international journals. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Constance W Atwell Award for Excellence in Low Vision Research 2002 by the Low Vision Research Group Committee at Ford Lauderdale, USA.
She conducts research in the areas of patient-reported outcome measurement, such as understanding the patient’s perspective of their treatment, eye condition, etc., and low vision, especially pediatric low vision.