Shelley Day Ghafoori, M.D.

Shelley Day Ghafoori is an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology at Dell Medical School. She grew up in Sunnyvale, California, and later moved to Massachusetts where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a degree in history and science. She stayed in Boston and attended Harvard Medical School, where she was awarded the competitive Beecher Prize and Osler Medal. She then completed a top-tier general ophthalmology residency program at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was the recipient of the Garcia/Asbury Award for research. She traveled back to the east coast to complete a two-year vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at Duke University, training with world-renowned faculty. During this time, she was the recipient of the nationally awarded Heed Ophthalmic Foundation Fellowship as well as the prestigious Ronald G. Michels Fellowship Foundation Award, which is given annually to the top retina fellows in the United States. After completing her retina fellowship, she joined the faculty of Stanford University as a clinical assistant professor of ophthalmology, spending her time taking care of patients, teaching fellows, residents and medical students and conducting clinical research. She subsequently relocated to Austin and became a partner at Austin Retina Associates.

Ghafoori specializes in the medical and surgical management of all vitreoretinal diseases, including ocular oncology. She has completed additional specialized ocular oncology training at Moorfields and St. Bartholomew’s Hospitals in London, England, where pioneering treatments for choroidal melanomas were first developed.

Ghafoori is board-certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology. She has been the lead author of numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals such as the Archives of Ophthalmology and the American Journal of Ophthalmology. She has also authored several textbook chapters including one on choroidal hemangiomas in the textbook Retina. She serves as a reviewer for several medical journals, including Retina, Graefes Archives for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, and International Ophthalmology. She is a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the International Society of Ocular Oncologists, the American Association of Ophthalmic Oncologists and Pathologists, and the American Society of Retina Specialists.