American Academy of Optometry Announces Dr. Fuensanta A. Vera-Diaz as 2017 Career Development Awardee
The American Academy of Optometry is pleased to announce Fuensanta A. Vera-Diaz, OD, PhD, FAAO, as the 2017 Academy Career Development award recipient. The Academy will provide a maximum of $50,000 in direct costs per year for up to two years, potentially renewable once for a total of up to four years of funding. The New England College of Optometry will provide matching funds, dollar for dollar, up to $50,000 per year for each year of funding. Dr. Vera-Diaz was selected from a pool of applicants by an Academy committee based on the potential for growth and future major extramural funding. The funding will help her support her hypothesis-based, yet clinically-focused research that emphasizes optometric procedures and therapies related to prevent and treat refractive error and amblyopia.
The Career Development award is designed for optometric educators and scientists involved in research including clinical, patient-oriented, educational, etc., as long as the case can be made for the potential to acquire future extramural funding. Preference is for innovative, original, independent, Principal Investigator (PI)-driven projects. It has been recognized for some time that young investigators, including optometric investigators, take many years after the inception of their careers before successfully acquiring Federal research funding. In fact, the mean age of first time National Institutes of Health (NIH) grantees is over 40 years of age. In an effort to positively influence and reduce the age at which early stage optometric researchers attain large scale federal support, the Academy launched the Career Development Award.
“This Award is very important for the development of my research and academic career, and I am truly appreciative of the support from the Academy and NECO. This Award will serve to conduct a research project titled ‘Peripheral and Binocular Retinal Signals in Human Myopia.’ The goal of the project is to identify the specific aspects of retinal image quality that are associated with the development of myopia (nearsightedness) in each individual. This is a key question in understanding the mechanism of myopia and possibly in creating successful interventions to treat it,” Dr. Vera-Diaz said in a statement.
Dr. Vera-Diaz, an Academy Fellow since 2012, is a full-time tenure-track Assistant Professor of Optometry at the New England College of Optometry. Her research is aimed at providing insight into the effect of retinal image quality in myopia and will serve as supportive evidence for a subsequent larger study on the etiology of human myopia. The goal of her studies beyond this project is to develop individualized optical correction and 3D digital therapies that will slow the progression of existing myopia and eventually prevent myopia.
Read more about the award online at http://www.aaopt.org/About/careerdevelopment.
About the American Academy of Optometry
The American Academy of Optometry (AAO) enhances excellence in optometric practice by fostering research and disseminating knowledge in vision science through its journal, Optometry and Vision Science, and the continuing education presented at its annual meeting. Fellows of the Academy are committed to the premise that learning is a lifelong obligation of a professional, as is the commitment to expand the profession’s knowledge base through ongoing fellowship and exchange.
The next annual meeting of the Academy will be October 11-14, 2017 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. For more information, visit:http://www.aaopt.org.