PCO Student Makes Her Mark on Specialty Contact Lens Technology 

PCO Student Makes Her Mark on Specialty Contact Lens Technology 

As a third-year Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO), Salus at Drexel University student, Mariana Garcia ‘26OD, is really interested in specialty contact lenses. When a patient came into the program’s clinical facility, The Eye Institute (TEI), suffering from keratoconus — an eye disease that causes the cornea to thin and bulge into a cone shape, which can lead to blurred vision, light sensitivity and other vision problems — she thought she would be able to help.  

Working under the tutelage of Nicholas Gidosh, OD ‘15, FAAO, chief of the Cornea and Contact Lens Service at TEI and associate professor at PCO, the two decided the patient was a candidate for a new specialty lens that corrects aberrations, imperfections in the eye’s optics that cause distorted or blurred vision. “The patient had been complaining of blurred vision for two years,” said Garcia. “We ended up getting the perfect lens for him. He tried it on and didn’t see double anymore. He was able to read and drive at night, and it really fixed everything.”  

The new technology they used to treat the patient is called Ovitz Ares, and the machine is called an aberrometer, which measures the patient’s aberrations. The success Garcia and Dr. Gidosh had with the patient during her clinical experiences led to a series of additional successes for the PCO doctoral student.

She first developed a case report poster on the work with the patient, which she entered into the ABB Optical Student Challenge in December 2024. The challenge is open to all Doctor of Optometry students across the country and this year had the highest number of submissions in the competition’s 10-year history. 

Garcia’s was then selected as the ultimate winner of the competition, the first time a student from the PCO has received the award. 

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