Stuart P Richer OD, PhD

Dr. Richer earned his undergraduate degree in 1977 from the Rochester Institute of Technology, after which he completed a dual OD MS (physiological optics) program at the University of California at Berkeley in 1981. A one-year residency in low vision / hospital based optometry followed at the Kansas City, Missouri DVA Medical Center. He has been Chief of Optometry at DVA Medical Center, North Chicago, IL since 1983. He has been actively involved in teaching optometry and medical students as well as postdoctoral fellows of all disciplines.

In 1996 Dr. Richer earned his PhD in human physiology and biophysics from Chicago Medical School following 15 years of practice. He’s an associate professor of Family and Preventative Medicine at Chicago Medical School and Clinical Optometry at ICO and UMSL. Dr Richer has authored papers in Current Eye Research, Experimental Eye Research, FASEB, Vision Research, Optometry & Vision Science, Optometry, and International Ophthalmology Clinics. He has presented his research to the US Department of Defense, the Spanish Ophthalmologic Congress (Granada, Spain 1996), Schepens Eye Institute Retina (Harvard, 2000 meeting), the Peking University Eye Center / ILSI Focal Point (Beijing, 2002 & 2009), ARVO Retinal Section  (Ft Lauderdale 2003), and the Canadian Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery (Montreal 2003, Ottawa 2005), Euro Press Conference (Frankfurt, Germany 2004), Spanish Retinal Society Madrid (2005), Italy Fermo (2005), Japanese Ophthalmologists (Sapporo 2005), EU Retina (Lisbon, Portugal 2006), The Technion, Israel (Haifa 2006) and ARVO SERC (USA 2006), Japan Kemin Lutein Symposium (Tokyo 2007). He is the principal investigator of the Veterans Lutein Antioxidant Supplementation Trial (LAST), the first US randomized double masked placebo controlled clinical trial of lutein and visual function published in the Journal Optometry April 2004 and the FDA/DVA approved Zeaxanthin and Visual Function Study (ZVF). He is a Fellow in the National Academy of Practices in Medicine and his Team was announced as Service to America Medal finalists in Science and Technology at the US Senate Hart Bldg, June 2006.

Actively involved in primary care optometry and clinical antioxidant research, Dr. Richer has special interests in aging, prescribing nutrients in the intervention of age related macular degeneration, low-tension glaucoma, diabetic macular edema, prevention of cataracts and dry eye.