2018 RECIPIENTS
APGS ASIA-PACIFIC AWARD
This prestigious APGS Award recognises distinguished glaucoma sub-specialists from the Asia Pacific region who have made significant lifetime contributions to the development of glaucoma care services in the Asia-Pacific region.
2018 Award recipient: Prof. Ningli Wang
Prof. Ningli Wang as engaged in clinical and scientific research in ophthalmology for 34 years, and performed more than 20,000 surgeries. He currently serves as a consultant expert in Central Health Care Committee. The main areas of his works are: the pathogenesis and diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma.
He is the Director of Beijing Tongren Eye Center (Key Discipline of the Ministry of Education and Clinical Key Specialty of National Health and Family Planning Commission), and Director of the National Research Center for Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Engineering Technology. He served as primary investigator (PI) of 11 major projects, including National High-tech R&D Program (863 Program), Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), NSFC Projects of International Cooperation and Exchange, Major Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. Besides that, he has led 2 national major blindness prevention projects. Prof. Wang has by now served as supervisor for 10 postdoctoral students and 52 doctoral students.
He has published 429 peer-review papers as the first author or corresponding author, including 167 SCI articles, with 5388 citations in total and 4765 citations by others. Among his publications, 25 papers are published on articles (first author or corresponding author) the top two international ophthalmology journals; 4 papers are published on Nature Genetics and 1 paper on Nature Communication. In terms of the number of articles published in the glaucoma field, he ranks the first in China and top 10 worldwide. He is the chief-editor of 26 textbooks and monographs on ophthalmology and 12 standard specifications, and has been authorized 20 patents. As PI, he was awarded 2 National Science and Technology Progress Second Class Awards and 4 Provincial Science and Technology Progress First Class Awards.
APGS INTERNATIONAL AWARD
This prestigious APGS Award recognises distinguished glaucoma subspecialists from outside the Asia-Pacific region who have made significant lifetime contributions to the development of glaucoma care and services in the Asia-Pacific region.
2018 Award recipient: Sir Peng Tee Khaw
Professor of Glaucoma and Ocular Healing and Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon.
Director of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ophthalmology at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology; Eyes and Vision Programme, UCL Partners Academic Health Science Centre; and Research and Development, Moorfields Eye Hospital.
Sir Peng's research interests are in developing new therapies, particularly for preventing scarring and regeneration, with a special interest in paediatric and young adult glaucoma. He has developed surgical techniques including the Moorfields Safer Surgery System, which have markedly improved the safety and outcomes of antimetabolite-assisted trabeculectomy in many parts of the world, especially reducing bleb related endophthalmitis and blebitis. He has developed anti-scarring regimens, which have led to international clinical trials. Currently, he is developing new anti-scarring drugs and delivery system, as well as devices, and has proposed the 10-10-10 challenge for glaucoma around the world: an intraocular pressure of 10 mmHg for 10 years done in 10 minutes. He has also published the ‘energy’ theory of glaucomatous axonopathy, helping move towards stem cell regenerative therapies for the optic nerve.
His publications include over 450 papers, chapters and books, and has helped raise over £120 million for clinical and research facilities, including the world’s largest children’s eye hospital. He was the first British President of ARVO and with his group has won some 25 awards, which include the first international ARVO/Pfizer Ophthalmic Translational Research Award; Alcon Research Institute Award; Sir Stewart Duke Elder Lecture & Medal Royal College of Ophthalmologists; 12th Lang Lecture Medal Royal Society of Medicine; the 23rd Dame Ida Mann Lecture Oxford University; and Hunterian Professorship at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Sir Peng was knighted in 2013 for services to ophthalmology by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
APGS YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD
This prestigious APGS award recognizes young clinician scientists from the Asia-Pacific region who have distinguished contributions to glaucoma research.
2018 Award recipient: Hiroshi Murata
Dr. Murata is one of the active young researchers in Japan. He is actively engaged in various fields of glaucoma research.
He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 2002. His academic research started in 2003. He was involved in basic research on glaucoma, investigating a method for in vivo imaging of retinal ganglion cells in mice, and he received WGA-Science-Award in World Glaucoma Congress 2008.
His current research interest is in applying machine learning method to clinical data, including visual field and OCT data. His specialty in machine learning method is Bayes modeling, and he proposed a variational Bayes linear regression model for predicting future visual field decay in 2014, which outperformed simple linear regression. He is now working on extending the model to develop a new visual field testing algorithm.