ICO Annual Montgomery Lecture
5 December 2014
Albert Theatre, RCSI, 6.30pm
Guest Speaker: Professor David S.H. Wong, Chair Professor in Ophthalmology, University of Hong Kong
Title 'Physics in Everyday Ophthalmology and Vitreoretinal Surgery'
The ICO is honoured to be welcoming Professor David Wong as this year’s guest speaker for the Annual Montgomery Lecture, which will be held on Friday 5th December in the RCSI. Currently Chair Professor in Ophthalmology at the University of Hong Kong, Professor Wong will give a talk entitled ‘Physics in Everyday Ophthalmology and Vitreoretinal Surgery’.
Professor Wong’s research in the retina field focuses on detachment, proliferative vitreoretinopathy and macular degeneration, understanding their pathogenesis and conducting clinical trials of surgery with adjuvant therapy and developing new surgical techniques and tamponade agents. His lecture on December 5th will discuss how physics affects our daily living and how it is the basis to many applications in general ophthalmology. A number of examples will be illustrated, focusing on those in Professor Wong’s own specialty, namely vitreoretinal surgery.
These will include;
1. Euclidian Geometry and Scleral Buckling Surgery.
2. Surface energy: do you need a helping hand to stop you slipping?
3. From Newtonian to Non-Newtonian behaviour: how to make fluids defy gravity.
4. The speed of light: how to make transparent structures visible and visible structures transparent.
5. From dressing salad to preventing glaucoma: is surfactant your best ingredient?
With such illustrations, Professor Wong argues that a case is made for blue sky research that can yield some amazing and unexpected solutions and benefits to many of the problems experienced.
Professor Wong held the position of President of the British and Eire Vitroretinal Society from 2010 – 2012 and was Vice President of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists from 2003-2007 and Chairman of the College’s Scientific Committee during this time.
He has authored 206 journal publications and 22 chapters in 12 books, over half of which have been published in leading medical journals, including the British Journal of Ophthalmology and in Ophthalmology, Retina and Graefe’s. Currently editor-in-chief for Graefe’s Archive of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, Professor Wong was section editor of the British Journal of Ophthalmology from 2001-2012.