Dr. Luxme Hariharan is a pediatric ophthalmologist within the Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. As an accomplished global researcher and child health advocate, Dr. Hariharan has a passion for international health that is deeply rooted in her own background. Born in Hyderabad, India, she grew up in Nairobi, Kenya; Iowa City, Iowa; and eventually, Madison, Wisconsin. As part of the University of Wisconsin’s competitive medical scholar program, she majored as an undergraduate in biology, as well as Spanish and Caribbean studies. During her senior year, she studied abroad in the Dominican Republic and Haiti to research childhood malnutrition.

Dr. Hariharan earned her medical degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. She completed a residency in ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania/Scheie Eye Institute in Philadelphia, followed by a fellowship in pediatric ophthalmology at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine/Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. Dr. Hariharan then pursued an additional fellowship in pediatric cornea, cataract and glaucoma with an emphasis on international health at the University of Southern California (USC) Gayle and Edward Roski Eye Institute at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She also holds a Master of Public Health with an emphasis on global and child health policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Her clinical interests include strabismus (eye muscle misalignment), amblyopia (lazy eye) and other comprehensive pediatric visual disorders.

Dr. Hariharan is board certified in ophthalmology. She is a member and serves on several committees within the American Academy of Ophthalmology, The American Academy of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus; and sits on the board of directors of Combat Blindness International. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and she has written textbook chapters on childhood blindness prevention. Dr. Hariharan’s life and career passion is to create and scale effective programs and policies to prevent, diagnose and treat childhood vision disorders both locally and abroad. Specifically, she has experience in policy, advocacy and governance, working with ministries of health on the implementation of childhood blindness prevention programs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and with the United Nations’ World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Hariharan was awarded the University of Wisconsin Alumni Foundation’s “Forward Under 40 Award” and named a 2014 and 2015 White House Fellow national finalist for her leadership and public service.