David Huang

Associate Director and Director of Research of Casey Eye Institute, the Wold Family Endowed Chair in Ophthalmic Imaging, Professor of Ophthalmology and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).  

Profile

The OCT Originator

David Huang earned both BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from MIT before obtaining his MD and PhD from the joint Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program in 1993. He subsequently completed an ophthalmology residency at the University of Southern California and a fellowship in cornea, external diseases, and refractive surgery at Emory University School of Medicine.

Huang is well-known for his innovations in applying laser and optical technology to eye diseases. He is a co-inventor, with James Fujimoto and Eric Swanson, of optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is now used in approximately 40 million procedures annually, and their seminal article for this technology – first published in Science in 1991 –  has been cited more than 18,000 times. In a 2016 interview with The Ophthalmologist, Huang said, “It is wonderful to know that [OCT] has been successful, useful, and beneficial to tens of millions of patients on an annual basis. I couldn’t have anticipated it at the beginning and I am very happy to see it grow over the years – the technology is always getting better and there are more diseases where it is useful.”

David has also accumulated 42 US patents in areas such as mobile health testing, tissue engineering, laser surgery, as well as OCT and OCT angiography (OCTA). His OCT-related contributions extend to the development of polarization-sensitive OCT, swept-source OCT, anterior eye OCT, and Doppler OCT. On top of this, he holds multiple prestigious positions at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), including Associate Director and Director of Research of the Casey Eye Institute, Wold Family Endowed Chair in Ophthalmic Imaging, and Professor of Ophthalmology and Biomedical Engineering.  

Over the past two decades, Huang has served as the principal investigator for six National Institutes of Health research grants, published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles with over 60,000 citations, and edited 12 books. He also leads the Center for Ophthalmic Optics and Lasers (COOLLab.net) and is a founder of GoCheck, whose GoCheck Kids smartphone app has screened over 5 million children for amblyopia risk factors. 

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Inventors and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, and a member of the American Ophthalmological Society, the Optical Society of America, and the National Academy of Engineering. 

We are delighted also to now induct David Huang into The Ophthalmologist Power List Hall of Fame.

Awards and Honors

2023 - National Medal of Technology and Innovation from the President of the United States
2023 - Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award 
2020 - Sanford and Susan Greenberg Prize to End Blindness Visionary Award
2017 - Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize from the National Academy of Engineering
2012 - Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award
2012 - Jonas Friedenwald Award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
2011 - Senior Achievement Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology