Dr Anuradha is currently the Principal of Elite School of Optometry, Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai and Kolkata, India. She is also the Head of the School children eye health and Special Community Optometry projects run by Sankara Nethralaya.

Dr Anuradha Narayanan obtained her graduation from Elite School of Optometry, and doctorate in the field of Community Optometry. Her doctorate work was on improving the school children’s eye health. She is a Diplomate from the Public Health and Environmental Vision section of the American Academy of Optometry (AAO) and obtained her PG Dip in Health Economics from the Public Health Foundation of India and Fellowship in Dispensing from the Association of British Dispensing, UK. Dr Anuradha also holds a Master’s degree in Psychology.

Prior to taking up teaching and community activities at Sankara Nethralaya, Dr Narayanan was the Optometrist-in- charge of the LASIK clinic at Sankara Nethralaya, India and has served the organization in various capacities since 1998. . She has a vast teaching experience since 2000 spanning 24 years. She has and currently supervises many masters level optometry students. She is also a supervisor for doctoral scholars in collaboration with national and international universities. She is the Head of the School eye health Programmes at Sankara Nethralaya for the last 13 years. She is also an adjunct faculty at Deakin University, Australia.

In the past years she has been awarded 15 major grants to fund the large-scale screening of vision outcome and status in school aged children in South India. These grants have led to a number of research publications plus book chapters and enabled the development of international collaborations in the US, UK and Australia. She is part of the task force of the Government of India that upgraded the model optometry curriculum for the undergraduates and postgraduates. She is a member of the Executive board of the AAO India Chapter, founder member and current President of the Elite School of Optometry Alumni Association. She is also the founder member of the Optometric Association of Tamil Nanbargal (Tamil Nadu). She is a key resource person and partner in the national school eye health project REACH (Refractive Error Among Children) that screened 1.8 million children funded by Qatar Fund for Development with Orbis India. She is the Principal Investigator for the “Experience Vision” project aiming at providing comprehensive school eye health across India by the Optometry Council of India. She was instrumental in Elite School of Optometry establishing collaborations for doctoral programmes with the national and International Universities.

She was instrumental in Sankara Nethralaya receiving the ‘SN Shah Vision 2020 award’ for her services towards woman and child eye health. She is the recipient of the “Best Researcher in Optometry” – Dr Narasimhan Memorial Award and “Best Researcher – Clinical Science in Ophthalmology” – Ruby Banik Award 2016-17. She is also the awardee of the ”Woman of the Year-2019”, ‘Outstanding Optometrist of the year award, Best Junior Faculty 2009-10 and Best Senior Faculty Award 2015-16 from the Medical Research Foundation. Apart, she is also the recipient of various community service awards and maximum eye donation pledges. She was instrumental in Sankara Nethralaya-Elite School of Optometry creating a Limca national record for screening and testing 8469 children in one day. She is the recipient of the “Optometry Contribution to public health Award”, 2021 instituted by the Optometry Council of India and Essilor. She is the Nehru-Fulbright Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) awardee for the year 2014. She has various publications to her credit and is also a reviewer.