Dr. Leah Levi, Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurosciences at UCSD and Director of the UCSD Neuro-Ophthalmology Unit, received her medical degree with Honors from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1978. After her internship she was a research fellow in Glaucoma at Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston where she subsequently completed her residency in Ophthalmology in 1986. She trained for a further two years in Neuro-ophthalmology at the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, doing clinical work with Neil R. Miller, M.D., and eye movement research with David S. Zee, MD.

Dr. Levi has been at UCSD since 1990. She has an active consulting practice in Neuro-Ophthalmology, seeing a range of patients, both children and adults, with visual disorders that are of neurological or vascular origin. This includes various optic nerve disorders such as optic neuritis, anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, hereditary conditions of the optic nerve and optic atrophy. She also sees patients with eye movement disorders such as myasthenia gravis, paralysis of eye movements, nystagmus and double vision and evaluates patients with visual problems resulting from conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, brain tumors and multiple sclerosis. In addition, Dr. Levi has an interest in thyroid-related eye disease and partakes in a multidisciplinary clinic with David B. Granet, M.D., and Don O. Kikkawa, M.D., managing patients with this condition, some of whom develop visual loss from involvement of the optic nerve.

In 2003 Dr Levi was appointed Director of the UCSD Department of Ophthalmology Residency Training Program. Dr. Levi has a particular interest in resident education and has won numerous awards for both resident and medical student teaching.

Dr. Levi is active in the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society (NANOS) and was elected as a Fellow of NANOS in 1998. She was on the NANOS Abstracts Committee for several years and was Chair of this committee from 2001-2004. She served as Secretary to the NANOS Executive Board from 2004 to 2006, and was elected Vice President of NANOS in March 2008.