Joseph Shovlin OD, FAAO

Joseph Shovlin is a senior optometrist at Northeastern Eye Institute in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He is an alumnus (1980) of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry, where he serves as adjunct faculty. He is a distinguished practitioner of the National Academy of Practice, diplomate and past chair of the Section On Cornea, Contact Lenses and Refractive Technologies of the American Academy of Optometry and past chair of the Contact Lens and Cornea Section of the American Optometric Association.

A few of his consulting arrangements include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Workgroup on Contact Lenses and the scientific advisory committee of the Pennsylvania Lion’s Eye Research Foundation. He has served on the Ophthalmic Devices’ Advisory Panel of FDA (voting member and consultant) and the National Advisory Eye Council of NIH (voting member).

He is associate clinical editor of Review of Optometry and clinical editor of Review of Cornea & Contact Lenses, section editor of Optometric Physician On-Line, journal board member of Optometry Times, Primary Care Optometry News and has served as a contributing editor for Optometry, International Contact Lens Clinic, Contemporary Optometry, Optometric Management and consulting editor of Contact Lens Spectrum. He has recently been named to the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology.

He is the immediate past president of the American Academy of Optometry and has served on the board of directors of the American Optometric Foundation. He has received several honors and awards including the American Optometric Association’s CLCS Achievement Award (2008), the Albert Fitch Memorial Alumnus of the Year recipient for PCO at Salus University (2011), the Legend Award of the Contact Lens and Cornea Section of the AOA (2012) , the National Optometrist of the Year for the National Keratoconus Foundation/NKCF (2018), and the National Academies of Practice James A. Boucher Award (2018). He recently received the Presidential Medal for Salus University (2019) at their centennial celebration and has recently been awarded the Frank Fontana Lifetime Achievement Award by Jobson Publishing (2020).