Asad Movahedan, MD is a board-certified ophthalmologist. He specializes in the medical and surgical management of complex vitreoretinal diseases and is the director of the retina service at George Washington's Department of Ophthalmology.
Dr. Movahedan has expertise in the diagnosis, medical management, and surgical treatment of diseases of the vitreous and retina. These include conditions such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, retinal vascular disease, macular pucker, central serous chorioretinopathy, macular hole, retinal detachment, and trauma.
Dr. Movahedan received his medical degree at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Iran, before joining the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Ophthalmology for post-doctoral training in stem cell transplantation and tissue engineering at The Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary of Chicago. He completed his internship at Mount Sinai Hospital where he was honored as the Resident of the Year award with dedication to patient care.
He subsequently completed his residency at The University of Chicago, Medical Center. Dr. Movahedan is the recipient of Albert M. Potts Award for outstanding research at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. He continued his research during residency in the field of retina and was awarded funding from the Illinois Society for Prevention of Blindness to continue investigating the relations between gut microbiome with age-related macular degeneration. He helped establish The Retina Microbiome Lab at the University of Chicago, where he developed the first germ-free mouse model of age-related macular degeneration. His scholarly distinction among ophthalmology residents in the United States was recognized by inviting him to the Heed Fellowship Foundation.
Dr. Movahedan completed his specialty training in medical and surgical retina at Yale University School of Medicine. He then joined the Ruiz Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Texas (UT), Houston where he worked as an attending physician at the Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital (county hospital of Houston) and The Texas Medical Center, taking care of thousands of patients in need with complex retinal conditions at one of the busiest trauma centers in the United States.
While at UT Houston, his academic excellence and dedication to education were recognized by receiving the Faculty of the Year teaching award every year. In addition, he was the primary investigator and site director for SOURCE, the big data analysis consortium in ophthalmology and brought national recognition to UT as the first institution in Texas to use this consortium in Data Science in Ophthalmology.
Dr. Movahedan’s other area of interest is the management of complex retinal detachment. Through research, he aims to create novel treatments for retinal detachment by understanding and preventing proliferative vitreo-retinopathy. He also holds research interests in the role of gut microbia in the development of age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the Western world after 60 years of age.
He has authored numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Cells, Investigational Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Translational Vision Science and Technology, Ophthalmology, Experimental Eye Research, Molecular Vision, PloS One, and the American Journal of Ophthalmology, among others.
Dr. Movahedan has received several awards and recognitions from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery presenting his research at the world’s largest associations in Ophthalmology recognizing his scientific contribution to the field of ophthalmology and retina.
