Awards and Recognition

The New Zealand National Eye Centre (NZ-NEC) hosted its annual Summer Scholar Symposium on 21st Feb 2020. Thirteen Summer Students from the Department of Ophthalmology and the Molecular Vision Laboratory presented at the symposium. One of the students was on an elective in India and presented via a pre-recorded PowerPoint presentation. She then connected via zoom to answer any questions from the audience.

The symposium was attended by approximately 40 staff, students and Faculty members. Presentations were judged by Professor Phillippa Poole, Head of School of Medicine and and Professor Cameron Grant Head of Department - Paediatrics: Child & Youth Health.

The winner of the symposium was Fay Abdul Ghani from Molecular Vision Laboratory. She was supervised by Dr Haruna Suzuki-Kerr and Dr Julie Lim. Second Prize went to William Xu from the Department of Ophthalmology. His Supervisor is Professor Helen Danesh-Meyer. Third Prize was awarded to Anmol Sandhu from the Department of Ophthalmology. Anmol was supervised by Professor Trevor Sherwin and his team.

See the article in NZ Optics:  http://www.nzoptics.co.nz/articles/archive/summer-scholar-symposium-2020/

Judy Loh wins the Special Patriot Award 2019, titled ‘Which came first, the kiwi or the egg?’.

The New Zealand National Eye Centre (NZ-NEC) hosted its annual Summer Scholar Symposium on 25th February 2019. Seventeen Summer Students from the Department of Ophthalmology, School of Optometry and Vision Science (SOVS) and the Molecular Vision Laboratory presented at the symposium. The students presented on the research projects that they had worked on over the 10 week studentships.

The symposium was attended by approximately 65 staff, students and senior faculty members.

The presentations were judged by Associate Professor Bridget Kool, Associate Dean (Academic) and Professor Andrew Shelling, Associate Dean (Research), FMHS.

First prize was awarded to Mehek Dutta from Ophthalmology, who was initially supervised by Dr Carol Greene and thereafter received major assistance from the Sherwin Lab Group: Professor Trevor Sherwin, Jane McGhee and Salim Ismail.

"The New Zealand National Eye Centre (NZ-NEC) hosted its annual summer student symposium on 2nd March 2018. Seventeen Summer Students from the Department of Ophthalmology, School of Optometry and Vision Science (SOVS) and the Molecular Vision Laboratory presented at the symposium. The students presented on the research projects that they had worked on over their 10-week studentships.

The symposium was very well attended with approximately 70 staff, students and senior faculty members. Presentations were judged by Professor Alan Merry, Head of School of Medicine and Professor Andrew Shelling, Associate Dean (Research), FMHS.

First prize was awarded to Catherine Tian who was supervised by Professor Trevor Sherwin."

"We have won both the ‘best research video’ and the ‘best video’ award in the RANZCO Congress film festival, with a shiny award to show for it. The winning video was entitled ‘Walking with Dying Spheres or Die Another Day’. The contributors were Salim Ismail, Jeremy Mathan, Jane McGhee, Dr Jinny Yoon, Ye Li and Associate Professor Trevor Sherwin. The video is essentially a fly on the wall documentary taking a lighthearted look at the trials and tribulations of our stem cell-enriched spheres during laboratory experimentation. We wanted to showcase some of our interesting time lapse videos that wouldn’t normally make it into publications and presentations and also show the promising results that we are getting in examining the potential of these spheres for corneal regeneration."

The New Zealand National Eye Centre (NZ-NEC) hosted its annual Summer Student Symposium on Friday 20th February. Sixteen summer students from the Department of Ophthalmology, the Department of Optometry and Vision Science and the Department of Pharmacy gave presentations on the research projects that they had worked on over their 10-week summer studentships. The symposium was well attended by senior academic staff, students and funders of the summer studentship scholarships.  The symposium provided an excellent opportunity for the students to share the results of their summer studentship with the wider ophthalmic and optometry communities, their supervisors, colleagues and peers whilst boosting confidence in their presentation skills.

The presentations were judged by Deputy Dean, Distinguished Professor Ian Reid and Associate Professor Warwick Bagg, Head of Medical Programme. First prize was awarded to Micahel Wang who was supervised by Associate Professor Jennifer Craig in the department of Ophthalmology and funded by the Uniservices. Second prize was won by Himanshu Wadhwa. Himanshu was supervised by Associate Professor Trevor Sherwin in the department of Ophthalmology and funded by the Tom Cat Trust. The third prize was won by Jeremy Mathan. Jeremy was supervised by Dr Hussain Patel, Associate Professor Dipika Patel and Professor Charles McGhee, and was funded by Save Sight Society.

Salim Ismail wins the Light Microscopy award titled ‘Show you true colours’: