Professor Shahina Pardhan OBE

Professor Shahina Pardhan is a sight saver. She became the first female and first Asian professor of optometry in the UK in 2001 and she has been an exceptional pioneer ever since. Her outstanding contribution to optometry includes advancing knowledge into the causes, risks and impact of vision loss as well as her ground-breaking work on diabetic retinopathy in South Asians. She is set apart as a truly exceptional academic by virtue of having taken her research findings into the field to find innovative ways to reduce the risk of blindness from diabetes in over 110,000 people of South Asian origin who are at very high risk of diabetic-related blindness. Working in her own time with patients, hospitals and communities at grassroots levels, she goes that extra mile and has made a direct and fundamental impact. Her determination and exemplary passion have saved the sight of many thousands of people in the UK and different parts of the world. She is Founding Director of Vision and Eye Research Institute at the School of Medicine, Anglia Ruskin University.