AMERICAN ACADEMY OF OPTOMETRY AWARDS

One of the most special sessions of our annual meeting is the Awards Program on Friday morning. Our Awards Committee, under the able leadership of Chris Johnson, selected this year's honorees from a highly competitive group of nominees. For each of the awards there was much discussion as to the relative merits and achievements of many of the nominees. Although many deserved recognition, the committee was forced to narrow its choice to the most commendable among the nominees. Please join us in Seattle at 8:00 AM on Friday, October 25th to honor our award winners.

Gordon E. Legge, PhD, of the University of Minnesota will receive the Charles F. Prentice Medal and will present the Prentice Lecture. This is the Academy's highest award for a distinguished career and accomplishment in research. His studies include the role of vision in real world situations including reading, spatial navigation, and object recognition. His significant contributions in understanding problems encountered by people with low vision have earned him our most cherished recognition of excellence in research.

David B. Elliott, PhD, MCOptom, FAAO of the University of Bradford will receive the Glenn A. Fry Award and will present the Fry Lecture. His studies cover numerous topics including the assessment and management of patients with cataract, clinical contrast sensitivity and glare testing, vision related quality of life issues, and the visual control of gait and posture.

Pete Kollbaum, OD, PhD, FAAO of Indiana University will receive the Irvin M. and Beatrice Borish Award. This award honors a young distinguished investigator and Dr. Kollbaum's work primarily in contact lenses, includes laboratory studies with translational clinical care implications to clinical patient care research, has earned him this honor.

Sandra Block, OD, MEd, FAAO, will receive the coveted Carel C. Koch Memorial Medal Award due to her significant involvement in the Special Olympics Lions International, the American Public Health Association, Prevent Blindness America, and Chicago Public Schools promoting better interprofessional relations for optometry.

George Woo, OD, PhD, FAAO will receive the American Academy of Optometry-Essilor Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Optometry for his establishment, leadership and development of the outstanding optometry program at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, contributions to the development of optometry in the Pacific Rim, and then adapting those skills to promote optometry throughout the world.

Murray Fingeret, OD, FAAO will be honored with the inaugural Vincent Ellerbrock Clinician Educator Award for his outstanding teaching within our Lectures and Workshop Program for so many years.

Louis Catania, OD, FAAO will be honored with the Eminent Service Award for his many years of contributions to the Academy and the profession.

Barbara Junghans, BOptom, PhD, FAAO will be honored with the Michael G. Harris Family Award for Excellence in Optometric Education for distinction in teaching within the University of New South Wales optometry program.

Michael Harris, OD, JD, FAAO and Anthony Cullen, OD, PhD, FAAO, will be honored with Lifetime Fellowship Awards for their commitment and service to the Academy.

Krystal Schulle, OD, will be honored for her paper on optics as a student at the University of Houston with the Julius F. Neumueller Award in Optics. She spiked the competition as first author of "Repeatability of On- and Off-Axis Eye Length Measurements Using the Lenstar" which was published in Optometry and Vision Science.

The Garland W. Clay Award is given to the authors of the most cited paper published in Optometry and Vision Science over the past five years. Padmaja Sankaridurg, BOptom, MIP, PhD, and co-authors Leslie Donovan, BOptom, Saulius Varnas, PhD, Arthur Ho, PhD, FAAO, Xiang Chen, MS, Aldo Martinez, PhD, FAAO, Scott Fisher, BscPsych, Zhi Lin, MSc, Earl Smith, III, OD, PhD, FAAO, Jian Ge, MD and Brien Holden, PhD, DSc, FAAO will be honored for their paper, "Spectacle Lenses Designed to Reduce Progression of Myopia: 12-Month Results."

Please join me in congratulating this most distinguished group of our colleagues, our 2013 American Academy of Optometry Award winners!