Key Dates

26 - 27 February 2022
Virtual Conference

28 April 2022
Virtual Conference access closes

 

Enquiries

Association Professionals
PO Box 7345
Beaumaris VIC 3193
Email the Conference Manager
or call on +61 3 9586 6080

Featured Speakers

Dr Dinesh Palipana - Opening Speaker

Dinesh was the first quadriplegic medical intern in Queensland, and the second person to graduate medical school with quadriplegia in Australia. Dinesh is a doctor, lawyer, disability advocate, and researcher. Halfway through medical school, he was involved in a catastrophic motor vehicle accident that caused a cervical spinal cord injury. Dinesh has completed an Advanced Clerkship in Radiology at the Harvard University. As a result of his injury and experiences, Dinesh has been an advocate for inclusivity. He is a founding member of Doctors with Disabilities Australia.

Dinesh works in the emergency department at the Gold Coast University Hospital. He is a senior lecturer at the Griffith University and adjunct research fellow at the Menzies Health Institute of Queensland. He has research interests in spinal cord injury. He is a doctor for the Gold Coast Titans physical disability rugby team.Dinesh was the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service’s Junior Doctor of the Year in 2018. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2019. He was the third Australian to be awarded a Henry Viscardi Achievement Award. Dinesh was the Queensland Australian of the Year for 2021.

 

Professor Hugh Taylor - Patricia Lance Lecture

Melbourne Laureate Professor Hugh Taylor is the Harold Mitchell Professor of Indigenous Eye Health at the University of Melbourne. He was Head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne and the Founding Director of the Centre for Eye Research Australia from 1990 to 2007. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Institute at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore with joint appointments in the Departments of Epidemiology and International Health. Professor Taylor’s current work focuses on Aboriginal eye health.

He has led the efforts to eliminate trachoma in Australia and developed “The Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision”, a blueprint to provide sustainable eye-care services to Indigenous Australians. He has worked with WHO in different roles for over 40 years. He has written 36 books and reports and more than 700 scientific papers. He has received multiple international awards and prizes and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. In 2001, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. He is a past President of the International Council of Ophthalmology, a previous Chairman of Vision 2020 Australia and Vice President of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness

 

Michelle Courtney-Harris - Invited Speaker

Michelle Courtney-Harris is an experienced clinical orthoptist, who in addition to fostering the academic learning and clinical education of orthoptic students at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), has recently submitted her thesis in the chosen area of stroke and vision. Part of Michelle’s thesis included validation of the Defect in Stroke Vision Screening Tool, which though the auspices of the ACI networks is available to be used on all patients when admitted to NSW hospitals for stroke.  The validation process also highlighted the need to further educate non-eye care practitioners working in stroke, on age-related and other vision related conditions for which stroke survivors may have that not only impact vision but may complicate the rehabilitation progress of stroke survivors. This led to the development of the ‘Understanding the Vision Defect in Stroke Screening Tool’ eLearning module which is currently located on the NSW Health and Education Training (HETI) platform. 

 

Professor Emma Gowen - Invited Speaker

Emma is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health within the Division of Neuroscience & Experimental Psychology. She co-directs the Body Eyes and Movement (BEAM) lab, researching sensory motor control and perception with a particular focus on autism in adulthood. Much of her research benefits from the direct involvement of the autistic community (autistic adults and parents of autistic children), facilitated by the network Autism@Manchester which she chairs.   She teaches on the BSc (Hons) Optometry degree as well as supervising Undergraduate and Masters Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology students. Her current administrative roles include Postgraduate tutor, member of the school mitigating circumstances committee and member of the University Research Ethics Committee.  

She qualified as an Orthoptist from The University of Liverpool in 1998, following which she worked at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital and undertook an MSc in Investigative Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences at The University of Manchester. She completed her PhD with Professor Richard Abadi in 2003 at University Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST - before merger into The University of Manchester). Shortly afterwards, she joined Professor Chris Miall at the Department of Psychology, Birmingham University. In September 2006, she took up a Lectureship at The University of Manchester was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2014.

 

Dr Claire Howard - Invited Speaker

Dr Claire Howard is a stroke / neuro specialist research orthoptist based at Salford Royal Hospital in the UK.  She completed an NIHR Clinical Doctorate Research fellowship in 2020 in collaboration with the VISION research unit at University of Liverpool.  Her research explored how people adapt to loss of peripheral vision after stroke. She currently holds a HEE/NIHR bridging award to further explore interventions into post-stroke visual field loss.

 

 

Lauren Hepworth - Invited Speaker

Dr Lauren Hepworth is stroke specialist orthoptist, with over 12 years of experience of working with a stroke survivor caseload. She obtained her PhD in 2017. She is currently a Stroke Association Post-Doctoral Research Fellow based at the University of Liverpool, UK and is Chief Investigator of the Impact of Visual Impairment after Stroke II (IVIS II) study. She has been involved with numerous studies involving visual impairment following stroke and other neurological conditions including the Impact of Visual Impairment after Stroke (IVIS) study, Programmes for Perimetry in Neurology (PoPiN) study and Visual Impairment Screening Assessment (VISA) study. She is currently academic lead for the British and Irish Orthoptic Society Stroke and Neuro Rehab Clinical Advisory Group.

 

Mythili Ilango - Invited Speaker

Mythili has been teaching in the Master of Orthoptics course at UTS since 2017. She has recently submitted her PhD thesis under the supervision of Professor Kathryn Rose and Dr Amanda French. Her current research has a focus on preschool vision screening and barriers to follow-up care.

 

 

 

Lindsay Klaehn - Invited Speaker

Lindsay Klaehn is a Clinical Orthoptist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.  She first certified in 2013 after graduating with concurrent diplomas in Orthoptics and Ophthalmic Medical Technology from Dalhousie University.  Over the past 8 ½ years as an orthoptist, Lindsay has worked to expand the role in Ophthalmology by establishing an Orthoptic Program within the Mayo School of Health Sciences and becoming its program director.  She has given numerous presentations at AACO’s National meeting and has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed publications. 

When Lindsay is not working, she is busy watching her two teenage daughters play hockey and act in plays.  She loves to camp and enjoys all outdoor activities especially fishing with her husband. 
 

Melanie Lai - Invited Speaker

Melanie graduated from University of Sydney in 2007 and has worked in various adult and paediatric clinics in the public and private setting. She has a Graduate Certificate in Health Leadership and Management and is the Orthoptic Advisor for South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and Orthoptic Department Head of Sydney Eye Hospital. She has extensive experience leading Orthoptic teams in public health settings and works collaboratively with the multidisciplinary eye team to improve the delivery of patient-centred eye care.  Melanie has interests in paediatrics, strabismus and neuro-ophthalmology. 

 

Clinical Associate Professor Heather Mack - Invited Speaker

Clinical Associate Professor Heather Mack is an ophthalmologist specialising in medical retina diseases, particularly inherited retinal diseases, for which she undertook a clinical Fellowship with Eliot Berson at Harvard Medical School and established a private clinical electrophysiology laboratory at Eye Surgery Associates in Melbourne.

Her research projects include patient understanding and expectations of retinal gene therapy, and histological studies of human retinal changes associated with retinal degenerations. She has provided leadership in more than 20 clinical trials, and is on the Advisory Board for voretigene neparvovec in Australia. A/Prof Mack has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and has given numerous invited presentations at national and local meetings. She was awarded an Achievement Award by the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and an AM for services to ophthalmology in 2021.

 

Sarah MacKinnon - Invited Speaker

Sarah trained as an orthoptist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and joined the Department of Ophthalmology at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2004. In her role at BCH, she’s been fortunate to work on a variety of clinical research projects in addition to working in patient care. The majority of her work in research has been examining families with comitant and incomitant forms of congenital strabismus for genetic study with Elizabeth C. Engle MD and David G. Hunter MD, PhD, and investigating the ophthalmic complications of craniosynostosis with Linda R. Dagi, MD. Sarah also participates in the education of pediatric ophthalmology fellows, residents, medical and orthoptic students. In collaboration with Tufts Medical Center, Sarah and the BCH team of orthoptists established the Boston Orthoptic Fellowship Program which began training its first student in 2018.

 

Professor Fiona Rowe - Invited Speaker

Professor Fiona Rowe is Professor of orthoptics at the University of Liverpool where she is Head of Department for primary care and mental health, and lead for the VISION research group. She is associate-editor-in-chief for the journal Strabismus and lead orthoptic editor for the Cochrane Library Eyes and Vision group. She is the Past President of the Society for Research in Rehabilitation and a mentor for the National Institute of Health Research integrated clinical academic training pathway.

Her particular research interests include visual impairment due to acquired brain injury (leading a number of national stroke projects), visual field evaluation and control of ocular alignment. Prof. Rowe is the author of two textbooks: ‘Clinical Orthoptics’ and ‘Visual fields via the visual pathway’, author for a number of book chapters, and has presented and published her research extensively.

   

Dr Zhichao Wu - Invited Speaker

Zhichao Wu is a Principal Investigator and Head of Clinical Biomarkers Research at the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA), and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is a clinician-scientist whose research aims to exploit technological advances to prevent irreversible vision loss, especially from common eye conditions such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and glaucoma.