Robert J. Zawadzki is an experimental physicist and biomedical scientist by training. He is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visions Science at the University of California, Davis, Managing Director of UC davis small animal ocular imaging facility (EyePod), and founding member of Vision Science and Advanced Retinal Imaging (VSRI) Laboratory. He is also OSA Senior Member and Deputy Chair for OSA Spotlight on Optics, ARVO Silver Fellow, and recipient of the BrightFocus Foundation National Glaucoma Research Dr. Douglas H. Johnson Award.

His broad background in biomedical optics, biomedical engineering, and vision science allowed him to build several successful research programs centered around applying multimodal (combined OCT and fluorescence SLO) adaptive optics enhanced clinical and basic science retinal imaging systems. He is also involved in developing novel image acquisition and data processing schemes that help quantify structural and functional changes in the retina in response to normal aging, disease progression, and therapy. Over the last few years, he has contributed to the growing field of retinal light-evoked optophysiology, where retinal function, in response to light stimulation, is probed directly using noninvasive optical imaging techniques. He supports adopting the term ORG "optoretinogram" to describe these functional assays as it draws an instructive parallel to the electroretinogram (ERG), which has long been used to assess retinal function in vivo. Specifically, the ORG, like the ERG, comprises multiple components arising from distinct cells and mechanisms, and both ERG and ORG require an explanation in terms of the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms to achieve their full scientific and clinical utility.