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Alvarez joined approximately 300 fellows, who are the leading scientists and clinicians in the field, at an induction ceremony at the academy’s 2019 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. At the conference, she gave a talk on the neural mechanisms underlying a vision therapy that helps patients with a disorder known as convergence insufficiency (CI) to read and focus clearly on close objects. That research was recognized by the academy as among the “10 most newsworthy of 2019.”

Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry

The use of virtual reality to change disparity (offset between left and right eye) programmed in a novel way that is patent-pending way which leads to a long term change of the vergence (how we see in depth) system.  Our team has filed for an international patent application entitled "Method, system, and apparatus for treatment of binocular dysfunctions."

Auggie Award: Most Innovative Breakthrough

Honoring a a female researcher or project manager leading an industry-academia collaborative project. Awarded to Dr. Tara Alvarez as head of the VERVE project.

Auggie Award: Women XR Laureate

Tara Alvarez, a professor of biomedical engineering who studies the links between visual disorders and the brain and develops novel devices to identify and treat them, was awarded NJIT’s Excellence in Research Prize and Medal from the Board of Overseers.

NJIT Excellence in Research

NJIT and inventors Tara Lynn Alvarez Ph.D. (NJIT) and Bérangère Granger (Essilor International S.A.) received an Edison Patent Award in the biomedical technology category for “Method for Determining the Acceptance of Progressive Addition Lenses” (U.S. Patent 8,814,361). The invention establishes a methodology by which a clinician can identify which people will easily adapt to Progressive Addition Lenses compared to those who will have a more difficult time.

Edison Patent Award

Outstanding Woman Scientist of NJ

NORA Founding Members Award for Science

CAREER Award National Science Foundation

NSF Reviewer

Sigma Xi: Research Honor Society

Tau Beta Pi: Engineering Honor Society

Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory

Oculomotor Technologies, CSO

Objective assessment of vergence after treatment of concussion-related CI: a pilot study

The influence of age on adaptation of disparity vergence and phoria

Functional activity within the frontal eye fields, posterior parietal cortex, and cerebellar vermis significantly correlates to symmetrical vergence peak velocity: an ROI-based, fMRI study...

Concurrent vision dysfunctions in convergence insufficiency with traumatic brain injury

Differentiation between Vergence and Saccadic Functional Activity within the Human Frontal Eye Fields and Midbrain Revealed through fMRI

Tara Alvarez, Ph.D.,  professor of biomedical engineering, is conducting neuroscience research that could help stroke victims recover their vision but also lead to diagnosis of other visual diseases. Alvarez seeks to understand how the brain learns when visually locating objects in three-dimensional (3D) space. Understanding the learning strategies that the human brain uses to control eye movement will also yield insight into the general problem of motor learning.  Her research will lead to a better understanding of basic motor control and also discover how dysfunctions in the eyes’ three-dimensional tracking system affect motor learning.  

In 2005, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Alvarez an NSF Career Award. Alvarez is using part of her NSF grant to enhance the Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory at NJIT and to design new courses for undergraduates in NJIT’s expanding biomedical engineering program. In addition, Alvarez has developed a one-week course for NJIT’s pre-college FEMME program which teaches grade-school girls, most of whom are minorities, the fundamentals of science, technology and pre-engineering concepts.

Alvarez’s research will help people with a visual problem called convergence insufficiency, or the inability to easily fixate the eyes on a near target. A person with convergence insufficiency cannot read or look at a computer screen for more than twenty minutes without getting headaches as well as blurred and double vision. The condition has also been linked to learning disabilities. And as societies become more dependent on prolonged and close-up visual tasks such as computer use, there will be more of a need to help people with such vision problems.

Vision Therapy

Virtual Reality

Vision

Neuroscience

Biomedical Engineering

Oculomotor Technologies

Faculty Profile Page

Visual and Neural Engineering Laboratory

Publications

Google Scholar Citations

An NJIT vision therapy team wins 'most innovative' in worldwide VR competition

Girls are interested in STEM; so why aren’t more women working in it?

For women in STEM, focus is on creating networks

Method for determining the acceptance of progressive addition lenses

tara alvarez

Tara Alvarez Headshot

Tara Alvarez landscape

tara alvarez gradient

DEVELOPMENT OF FNIRS EQUIPMENT FOR ASSESSING FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY IN BRAIN INJURY

CAREER: Mapping the Mind in Search of Oculomotor Learning Strategies

I-Corps: Virtual Reality Vision Therapy

MRI: Development of Visual and Neural Assessment Equipment

Professor and Director, Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Program

NJIT Excellence in Research 2017 - Tara Alvarez

Convergence Insufficiency is present in 1 out of 2 people with concussion and is a common eye movement dysfunction that impacts a person’s ability to read comfortably.   Dr. Alvarez and her team are developing virtual reality video games as a form of therapeutic intervention to rehabilitate patients especially children to improve vision function which improves their ability to read.

Tara Alvarez, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering, is conducting neuroscience research that could help stroke victims recover their vision but also lead to diagnosis of other visual diseases. Alvarez seeks to understand how the brain learns when visually locating objects in three-dimensional (3D) space. Understanding the learning strategies that the human brain uses to control eye movement will also yield insight into the general problem of motor learning. Her research will lead to a better understanding of basic motor control and also discover how dysfunctions in the eyes’ three-dimensional tracking system affect motor learning. In 2005, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Alvarez an NSF Career Award.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Interdisciplinary Research to Restore Binocular Coordination | Tara Alvarez | TEDxNJIT

NJIT Excellence In Research Prize & Medal 2017 and Lifetime Achievement Award.
Tara Alvarez, a professor of biomedical engineering who studies the links between visual disorders and the brain and develops novel devices to identify and treat them, was awarded NJIT’s Excellence in Research Prize and Medal from the Board of Overseers at a ceremony on campus last night. Yehoshua Perl, a computer science professor who brings order and accuracy to massive databases of medical information, received the board’s Excellence in Research Lifetime Achievement Award.

With a multidisciplinary team of engineers, computer scientists, artists and clinicians, Alvarez is currently developing instruments to detect and treat the eye motor disorder known as convergence insufficiency (CI), in which the muscles that control eye movements do not coordinate to focus on near objects. Because each eye sees images separately, the person experiences double and blurred vision, headaches and difficulty concentrating. The impact on cognition and learning can be severe, particularly in children.

The disorder is also one of the primary symptoms of concussion, and Alvarez is working with five major children’s hospitals around the country to test her devices, which are potentially powerful diagnostic tools. She hopes that one day they will help coaches and trainers on the field, for example, decide if it is safe to return a shaken-up player to the game. Follow-on blows can be devastating in the near- and long-term.

As Alvarez explains, “The visual neural circuit composes a lot of space in the brain, and is thus easily damaged by a concussion. In terms of cognitive load, if someone is expending significantly more energy acquiring visual information, then less energy is available for thinking.” 

Her diagnostic machine integrates two devices – a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging machine and a video-based eye-tracking system – that together detect how changes in brain activity following an injury, including a mild concussion, correspond with changes in eye movements. Strapped to the head, the fNIRS machine uses light beams to measure blood oxygen levels – indicators of neural activity – in different regions of the brain. An ocular device Alvarez has created, known as a Vision and Neural Assessment Equipment system, measures eye movements and accommodation – the ability to see images clearly, which are promising biomarkers for neurological functions such as visual attention and memory.
Once she determined how to test for CI, she put together a team of students and clinicians to help her develop a virtual reality-enhanced therapeutic device, played as a computer game, to treat it. “Therapies (for CI) have not evolved much since the 70s, and while they’re very good, they’re incredibly boring,” she noted. By making them fun, she added, “we hope people will want to do them.”
Reflecting on her career, she said, “If you really work hard and have a passion for what you love, you can make your dreams come true. And not because I say so, because I’m doing it.”

Much of that passion clearly comes from collaboration. In her remarks last night, Alvarez lavished gratitude and affection on her diverse partners. Of her NJIT colleague Bharat Biswal, a pioneer in exploring the neuronal activity of the brain at rest, she noted, “Bharat taught me everything I know about imaging.”


Yehoshua Perl
Lifetime Achievement Award

Perl was unable to attend the ceremony last night, and so it was up to his longtime co-workers and friends to speak for him. And they did, elegantly, calling him a towering figure in the field of biomedical ontology – a branch of medical informatics that enables the acquisition, storage and retrieval of information – as well as a cherished mentor and friend.

Many biomedical terminologies are measured in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of terms, including drug names and their chemical ingredients, symptoms, diagnoses, body parts, medical procedures, medical devices, infectious agents and accidents, among others. These terminologies are hard to understand and contain inconsistencies. Understanding them and finding inconsistencies with textual representations is difficult, and it is therefore useful to use graphical representations.
Without a sophisticated approach, visualizing these networks on a computer screen can lead to failure. As biomedical terminologies are increasingly used in applications such as electronic health records, ensuring that terminologies are free of inconsistencies helps ensure accuracy.

James Geller, a professor of computer science who co-directs NJIT’s Structural Analysis of Biomedical Ontologies Center with Perl, noted that in an age of increasing reliance on computers, his longtime collaborator and friend made sure “the underlying information is correct.”

NJIT Excellence In Research Prize &amp; Medal 2017

NJIT Excellence in Research: Dr. Tara Alvarez

Tara Alvarez, Ph.D. is a professor of biomedical engineering, director and founder of the Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory and director of the Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Program. She is the lead engineer within a team that is making a difference in treating vision function in brain injury patients, especially children with concussion. Specifically, she is establishing new clinical standards for treating patients with vision dysfunction following brain injury and is working with five major children’s hospitals to assess the effectiveness of her system. This will result in broader impact to further understand what is different in patients with convergence insufficiency (CI) and how the brain changes post-vision therapy. Her system is more cost-effective and can be used within the comfort of one’s home or by a broad array of health care professionals which will revolutionize the way in which people are diagnosed and treated.

The mission of her research is to understand the underlying neural mechanisms that lead to a sustained reduction in visual symptoms and to take that knowledge, integrated with technology, to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic interventions that can be used for personalized point-of-care.

Alvarez’s research was the first to examine the link between vision therapy and the brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), she was able to document how the brain changed as a result of vision therapy. In 2016, she and her clinical collaborators published the first paper examining convergence in patients with concussion before and after vision therapy. They showed that the patients’ eye movements improved significantly following therapy. Their proposal, entitled CICON (Convergence Insufficiency in Concussion) will study CI in children with concussion. Alvarez is the lead engineer for CICON and will be installing her novel instrumentation at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Boston Children’s Hospital, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Southern California College of Optometry and Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio. With the knowledge acquired since 2001, she and her team are designing innovative diagnostic and therapeutic interventions with NJIT’s Game Design program.

NJIT Excellence in Research Award Dr. Tara Alvarez

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