10/3/2015

Author: Alejandra Consejo, Wrocław University of Technology

Nowadays scleral contact lenses (SCL) are becoming more and more popular. Ocular surface diseases and cornea irregularity such as keratoconus are the major indications for this kind of contact lenses. Last January I had the chance of attending the GSLS (Global Speciality Lens Symposium) in Las Vegas, USA. There not only the state of the art of SCL was presented by the Scleral Lens Education Society but also the last research in the field was shown by different well-known scientists. If something differentiate this meeting from other I’ve been it is its practical point of view. The whole symposium was crowded with practitioners, people who are used to deal with patients everyday rather than working in a lab. That makes you get the feeling of which are the real challenges and the real necessities that must be solved, what the market is demanding and what should be the future challenges to commit. Being part of this audience was encouraging, it made me realize that the results from my current research, this is presenting an accurate model which describes the anterior part of the eye, might be really useful for solving a real and actual problem, not just an academic exercise.

Probably one of the major advantages of being part of this AGEYE huge European project is precisely having the opportunity of exchanging information. Last week OC’15 Ageing Eye Annual meeting was celebrated in Valencia, Spain, which was an opportunity to present to the community the research that has been developed till now, somehow was itself an exchange of knowledge, not only between fellows but also with professionals from the field of vision, from business and academic world. That mixture, that difference in points of views, in how to approach a problem opens your field of vision, because in the end that’s what all this is about, learning, grabbing new ideas, comparing results, sharing knowledge… making science.

Oral presentation during the OC´15 Ageing Eye Annual meeting in Valencia, Spain. (Picture courtesy of Matt Jaskulski)