Rate My Professor Michael Pianta

Michael Pianta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, Melbourne School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD, Graduate Certificate, and Postgraduate Certificate from the University of Melbourne. As Director of the Retinal Structure and Function Laboratory, Pianta investigates the fundamental workings of the living retina at the microscopic scale, encompassing normal function and impairment in sight-debilitating diseases such as diabetes and age-related macular degeneration. His research integrates high-resolution non-invasive imaging, psychophysics, computational modeling, and electrophysiology. Ongoing projects feature multispectral adaptive optics to image the smallest neurons and blood vessels in living human eyes, analyze blood flow and oxygen exchange at the individual red blood cell level, and explore optical and physiological responses of photoreceptors to light. Specific initiatives include a clinical test of dark adaptation for age-related macular degeneration and studies on retinal structure and function in ageing and disease.