Balamurali Krishna "Bala" Ambati is an Indian-American ophthalmologist, educator, and researcher. On May 19, 1995, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's youngest doctor, at the age of 17 years, 294 days.
Patricia Era Bath was an American ophthalmologist and humanitarian. She became the first female member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, the first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and the first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American to serve as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University. She was also the first African-American woman to serve on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. A holder of five patents, she founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.
Alfred (Al) Sommer is a prominent American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent. The World Bank and the Copenhagen Consensus list vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the world.
AMD Alliance International is a non-profit coalition of the world’s leading vision, seniors and research organizations working to raise awareness of age-related macular degeneration, understanding of available options for prevention, early detection, treatment, rehabilitation and support services. It is the only international organization in the world that concentrates exclusively on age related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in the developed world.
Alampur Saibaba Goud is an Indian ophthalmologist and founder-chairman of the Devnar Foundation for the Blind. He is also a social entrepreneur, and active in the voluntary organization at Secunderabad in Telangana, a state of India. He works in the field of providing aid to visually challenged and visually disabled children in India.
The International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) is an international organisation that represents professional associations of ophthalmologists. It is headquartered in Brussels.
The Llura Liggett Gund Award honors researchers for career achievements that have significantly advanced the research and development of preventions, treatments and cures for eye disease.
Fight for Sight is a nonprofit organization in the United States which funds medical research in vision and ophthalmology. It was formed in 1946 as the National Council to Combat Blindness (NCCB), the first non-profit organization in the United States to fund vision research; 2011 marked its 65th anniversary.
Arnall Patz was an American medical doctor and research professor at Johns Hopkins University. In the early 1950s, Patz discovered that oxygen therapy was the cause of an epidemic of blindness among some 10,000 premature babies. Following his discovery, there was a sixty percent reduction in childhood blindness in the United States. He also conducted pioneering research in the 1960s into the use of lasers in the treatment of retinal disorders. He received the Lasker Award in 1956 for his research into the causes and prevention of blindness and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 for his lifetime of work in the field of ophthalmology.
Vasu Chanchlani was an Indian-Canadian serial entrepreneur, philanthropist and trans-nations builder. He is co-founder of the Sigma Group of Companies and a founding member of the Canada India Foundation. He is also an investor in dozens of companies globally consisting of start-ups and turn-arounds. He is best known for his efforts towards improving Canada-India relations through his philanthropic activities and engagement with Indian Diaspora to serve bilateral interests of both Canada and India. Most recently, Vasu was awarded the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants award by the Canadian Immigrant magazine. On January 9, 2014, his excellency shri Pranab Mukherjee, President of the Republic of India, conferred the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA), the highest honour bestowed on non-resident Indians, by the Government of India.
King-Wai Yau is a Chinese-born American neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Organisation for the Prevention of Blindness is an international non-governmental organisation whose actions today focus exclusively on French-speaking countries in Africa. Their mission is to preserve and restore sight amongst some of the most under-privileged communities in the region. The OPC's principal actions concern blindness prevention, treatment and the elimination of blinding diseases, such as onchocerciasis, trachoma, glaucoma and cataracts as well as formal ophthalmological training.
The Chanchlani Global Health Research Award is a Canadian health sciences award that recognizes a world leading scholar in the area of Global Health. Each year a discipline within Global Health is chosen by the internal review committee at McMaster University. The review committee then selects the leading researcher based on interview and impact in the field. The award recipient receives a monetary prize of $5,000 and opportunity to present their research findings to researchers and students.
Reza Dana is the Claes H. Dohlman Professor of Ophthalmology, senior scientist and W. Clement Stone Clinical Research Scholar at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, and director of the Harvard-Vision Clinical Scientist Development Program.
Gullapalli Nageswara Rao is an Indian ophthalmologist, the chairman of the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis (AOI) and the founder of the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. A former associate professor at the School of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Rochester, Rao is a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India. He was honored by the Government of India, in 2002, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri. He was elected in 2017 to the Ophthalmology Hall of Fame instituted by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.
Yog Raj Sharma is an Indian ophthalmologist and ex-chief of Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, the apex body of the National Programme for the Control of Blindness, a Government of India initiative to reduce the prevalence of blindness in India. He is the Chairman of the Task Force on Prevention and Control of Diabetic Retinopathy Group and the Co-Chairman of the National Task Force on Prevention of Blindness from Retinopathy of Prematurity under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of India. An advisor to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. Sharma was honored by the Government of India in 2015 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award. In 2005, Yog Raj Sharma's published article on "Pars plana vitrectomy vs scleral buckling in rhegmatogenous retinal detachment" in Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavica and in November 2021, American society of retina specialists cited it as top 100 publications on retinal detachment management in the last ~121 years. Of these top hundred publications, only nineteen countries contributed, three of the contributing countries were Asian and from India this study was the sole contribution. Dr Sharma called it 'the singular biggest achievement of his career" in an article published in Daily Excelsior, Jammu in December 2021.
Clare Gilbert is a British ophthalmologist, professor and researcher who focuses on blindness in children. She is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
Sheila Kay West is an American ophthalmologist who is the El-Maghraby Professor of Preventive Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute. She is also the vice-chair for Research.
Van Charles Lansingh is a Mexican ophthalmologist, clinician-scientist and author, specialising in public health. He is currently a faculty at Mexican Institute of Ophthalmology (IMO), Querétaro, Mexico where he serves as Director, International Affairs. He is also a voluntary assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Miller School of Medicine of the University of Miami, Florida and serves as the chief medical officer at HelpMeSee, a global non-profit training organisation.