Eli Peli

Dr. Eli Peli was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel.  He served 3 years as a radio communication instructor in the Israel Defense Force before attending college.  He received a BSc, cum laude, and an MSc degree in electrical engineering, from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.  He then came to Boston where he earned his doctorate from New England College of Optometry.  
Dr. Peli is a Senior Scientist and the Moakley Scholar in Aging Eye Research at The Schepens Eye Research Institute, and Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He also serves on the faculties of the New England College of Optometry (Adjunct Professor of Optometry and Visual Sciences), Tufts University School of Medicine (Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology), and University of York, UK (Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Electronics). Since 1983 he has been caring for visually impaired patients as the Director of the Vision Rehabilitation Service at the New England Medical Center Hospital in Boston. Dr. Peli is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, a Fellow of the SID (Society for Information Display), and a Fellow of the SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering). He was presented the 2001 Glenn A. Fry Lecture Award and the 2009 William Feinbloom Award by the American Academy of Optometry, the 2004 Alfred W. Bressler Prize in Vision Science (shared with Dr. R. Massof) by the Jewish Guild for the Blind, the 2006 Pisart Vision Award by the Lighthouse International, and the 2009 Alcon Research Institute award (shared with Dr. R. Massof). He was awarded an Honorary Degree of Master in Medicine by Harvard Medical School in 2002 and an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the State University of New York (SUNY) in 2006.
Dr. Peli’s principal research interests are image processing in relation to visual function and clinical psychophysics in low vision rehabilitation, image understanding and evaluation of display-vision interaction. He also maintains an interest in eye movement control and binocular vision. In the last decade his vision rehabilitation work has concentrated on issues of mobility with impaired vision. Dr. Peli is a consultant to many companies in the ophthalmic instrumentation area and to manufacturers of head mounted displays (HMD). He serves as a consultant on many national committees, advising the National Institutes of Health, NASA AOS (Aviation Operations Systems) advisory committee, National Highway Safety Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Dr. Peli has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers and has been awarded 8 US Patents and one Japanese Patent. He edited a book entitled Visual Models for Target Detection with special emphasis on military applications and coauthored a book entitled Driving with Confidence: A Practical Guide to Driving with Low Vision (coauthored with brother Doron Peli).
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Education

M.Sc., Electrical Engineering, 1979, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
O.D. 1983, New England College of Optometry

Contact Information

617-912-2597
FAX: 617-912-0111 

To visit Dr. Peli's Vision Rehabilitation Laboratory site,
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