Distinguished Lecture Series
Steven Yeh, MD, professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at UNMC.
2026 Lectures
Monthly Distinguished Lectures
February 13, 2026
Aleksandra V. Rachitskaya, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Case Western Reserve University’s Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and a member of the vitreoretinal faculty at Cleveland Clinic’s Cole Eye Institute. She serves as Cole Eye Institute Vice Chair of Safety Quality and Patient Experience. She specializes in the diagnosis and management of medical and surgical retinal diseases. Prior to her appointment at the Cleveland Clinic in 2014, Dr. Rachitskaya served as the Chief Resident and Director of Ocular Trauma at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida.
March 19-20, 2026
Donald Budenz, MD received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed an ophthalmology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, Scheie Eye Institute. Dr Budenz then completed a Heed Foundation Fellowship in Glaucoma at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami School of Medicine, where he subsequently was a faculty member for 17 years. In 2004, he received a Masters in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. After serving as Kittner Distinguished Professor and Chairman of Ophthalmology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA for 14 years, he returned to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute as Professor of Ophthalmology.
May 1, 2026
Damien Gatinel, MD is the head of anterior segment and refractive surgery at the Rothschild Foundation in Paris, is a researcher and innovator with an interest in ophthalmic optics. His most recent investigative forays include taking another look at Zernike analysis to try to make it more clinically useful.
Through the lecture series, our goals are to:
- Provide educational opportunities for our faculty, fellows and residents.
- Establish our department as the “go to” place for high quality educational ophthalmic and optometric education in the community.
- Develop broad regional support for the “Unity in Community” program and establish Omaha as a regionally recognized ophthalmic educational center of excellence by unifying the vision community through education and collaboration.
- Bring highly accomplished and nationally recognized speakers to UNMC to both provide education across a wide array of subspecialties, as well as to increase our department's national presence.