Professor Debbie Sweeney

The British Contact Lens Association (BCLA) has awarded its prestigious BCLA Medal to, Professor Debbie Sweeney, at its annual conference. The award acknowledges her outstanding achievements in the contact lens field.

Professor Sweeney has been involved in national and international bodies advancing eye care, the contact lens industry and education for more than 20 years. She has made important international contributions in the area of contact lens research, product development and education, including being closely involved in the development of the silicone hydrogel contact lens, a co-founder and long-time president of the International Association of Contact Lens Educators.

She is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Cornea and Contact Lens Research Unit (CCLRU) and secretary general of the Keratoprosthesis (KPro) Study Group.
Previous recipients of the BCLA Medal include Brien Holden, Desmond Fonn, Charles McMonnies and Richard Hill.

Professor Sweeney’s address at the BCLA conference focused on the future for vision correction and the prospects for permanent but reversible devices such as synthetic corneal inlays and onlays. She is currently Director of the Corneal Onlay project at the Institute for Eye Research and Deputy CEO of the Vision CRC.


Prestigious international awards to postgraduate students

Three outstanding postgraduate students from the Institute for Eye Research have recently been acknowledged for the quality of their research in winning two prestigious international optometric awards. Nicole Carnt has received the 2010 Dallos Award from the British Contact Lens Association (BCLA) and Maria Markoulli and Ravi Bakaraju each awarded Ezell Fellowships by the American Optometric Foundation(AOF). The awards will provide substantial funding for their research projects.

The Dallos Award, presented to only one recipient each year, provides funding worth £ 5000 toward a research project furthering the scientific community’s understanding of a topic related to contact lenses or the anterior eye. Ms Carnt jointly won the award with Professor Fiona Stapleton, Head of School of Optometry and Vision Science at UNSW. The grant will provide funding over the next year for the project: ‘Risk-taking behaviour: relationship with contact lens complications and compliance’ and Nicole will present the findings from this research at the 2010 BCLA conference.

The Ezell Fellowships, which support postgraduate research in the areas of physiological optics, vision science and related fields, were this year awarded to only ten postgraduate students internationally. Maria Markoulli, a graduate of the School of Optometry and Vision Science at UNSW, is undertaking a PhD project focused on identifying the underlying causes and predisposing factors of corneal erosions in contact lens wear. Maria’s previous research on myopia was presented at the American Academy of Optometry’s (AAO) Annual meeting in 2008, where it was selected as one of the most noteworthy presentations.

Ravi Bakaraju is a graduate of the Bausch & Lomb School of Optometry, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, in Hyderabad, India. His PhD thesis investigates the optical performance of multi-focal contact lenses with the use of schematic and physical model eyes. In 2008 and 2009, Ravi was presented with the Cornea and Contact Lens Society of Australia Award.

The awards are valued at US$ 8000 plus additional funding toward travel to the major international annual meetings of the AAO and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. William C. Ezell was the guiding force behind the establishment of the AOF, an affiliate of the AAO.