New Membership Category Aims to Grow Society

The Cornea Society has added a new membership category, “Fellow of the Cornea Society,” to allow members who have completed an Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology Fellowship Compliance Committee (AUPO-FFC)-accredited fellowship to vote and attain leadership positions without having to write a thesis.

“We wanted to make things easy for younger corneal specialists,” says Kathryn Colby, MD, PhD, the Society’s president-elect.

To apply for the new category, physicians must have treated corneal disease patients for at least 4 years.

In her new position, Dr. Colby says her main goal is to position the Society for success in the future.

“We want to expand our membership — hence the new membership category — and potentially create a charitable foundation for the Society to support our educational efforts,” she explains. The society currently has 790 members.

Awards Presented at Forum

Award winners were recognized for their achievements at last year’s Cornea and Eye Banking Forum, held in October in San Francisco.

1 Marina Bertolin, MSc, researcher, Veneto Eye Bank Foundation, Venice, Italy, was honored with the Richard C. Troutman, MD, DSc, Prize Lecture & Award for her paper entitled “Optimized Protocol for Regeneration of the Conjunctival Epithelium Using the Cell Suspension Technique.” Dr. Bertolin’s prior research includes work on the conjunctiva, the amniotic membrane, stem cells, and cell therapy.

2 Shahzad Mian, MD, vice chair for clinical sciences and education and professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Michigan’s Kellogg Eye Center, Ann Arbor, MI, was awarded the R. Townley Paton Award for his lecture entitled “Defining Competency for Cornea Surgeons: Fellowship and Beyond.” Dr. Mian has studied corneal transplantation techniques, graft-versus-host disease, and eye banking.

► Shruti Sinha, MD, cornea research fellow in the laboratory of Reza Dana, MD, MSc, MPH, Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, received the “Best Paper of Session Award” for her paper entitled “Prevalence of Persistent Corneal Epithelial Defects in Chronic Ocular Graft-Versus-Host Disease.” Previously, she researched the incidence and prevalence of persistent epithelial defects in chronic ocular graft-versus-host-disease.

3 Ivan R. Schwab, MD, FACS, professor of ophthalmology, Department of Ophthalmology & Vision Science, University of California Davis School of Medicine, received the Claes H. Dohlman, MD, PhD, Award. This award recognizes a lifetime of teaching excellence in cornea and external disease. Dr. Schwab’s research interests have included comparative optics and ocular physiology, evolutionary biology, and stem cell biology for the ocular surface. CP