Faculty and Staff - Optometry and Vision Sciences (M.Optom)

Certified Optometrist, with over 10 years experience in Optometry, soon have to completed her MA in Optometry.

Dr. Ifrah is an optometrist with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Optometry from Hadassah Academic College, a Master’s degree in medical neurobiology from the Hebrew University and a Doctoral degree in Optometry from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in collaboration with Hadassah Academic College.

She has been teaching at Hadassah Academic college since 2008 and is an active researcher in the field of meibomian gland dysfunction and dry eye.

Ms. Politi is a clinic instructor and lecturer at Hadassah Academic College. 

She is an optometry clinic director at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and a clinic instructor for optometry and medical students.

In addition, she's a director of a private clinic in Shaare Zedek that specializes in the fitting of specialty contact lenses and treatment of binocular issues among pediatric and geriatric patients. 

Professor Simon Barnard graduated from City University in 1976.  After working at the NOOR Eye Hospital, Kabul Afghanistan, he completed his training in private practice and at the Department of Contact lenses and Prosthetics, Moorfields Eye Hospital, London.

He is a Fellow of the College of Optometrists (UK); Fellow of the European Academy of Optometry & Optics; and Emeritus Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry.

Professor Barnard was a full time Lecturer in Clinical Optometry from 1979 to 1999, Director of Paediatric Clinics until 2002 and Tutor in Ocular Disease until 2004 at the Department of Optometry & Visual Science, City University, London. As Director of Ocular Medicine at the Institute of Optometry, London he developed the first GOC accredited therapeutic course licensing optometrists to prescribe medication and am himself qualified and registered with the GOC as Independent Therapeutic Prescriber in the UK.

He served until 2009 as a UK representative on the European Council of Optometrists (ECOO) Board of Examiners as Convenor of the Abnormal Ocular Conditions module of the European Diploma of Optometry.

Professor Barnard is a Visiting Professor of Clinical Optometry at the Department of Optometry & Vision Science, Hadassah Academic College  where he is responsible for clinical sections of the International Master’s Degree including the modules on Paediatrics; Glaucoma; and Retina in Optometry Practice.

He was awarded a PhD on eye movements in 1999 and am a Fellow of the College of Optometrists UK, the American Academy of Optometry and the European Academy of Optometry & Optics.

He has published over 50 clinical papers in journals or books and is the Co-Editor and Author of the textbook Paediatric Eye Care, published by Blackwell Science in 1996 and presented over 450 invited postgraduate lectures or research presentations in Croatia, France, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, Israel, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad, the UK and the USA.

He has extensive experience as an expert witness in preparing medico-legal reports with a roughly equal split between claimant and defendant including at GOC tribunals and was a founding Director of IRISS Medical Technologies which invented and developed the Volk Eye Check..