ASRS 2024 Young Investigator Award highlights rising stars in the field of ophthalmology

Judy Kim, MD, professor of ophthalmology, Jean and Tom Walter endowed distinguished chair in ophthalmology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, and ASRS Foundation president, talks about the 2024 American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) Annual Meeting that took place in July 2024. She talked about the Young Investigator Award and the importance of recognizing the next generation of researchers.

Question:

You introduced the Young Investigator Award winner during a session in retinal vascular disease at ASRS 2024. What is the importance of mentoring and recognizing rising stars and researchers in the field?

Judy E. Kim, MD:

I had the honor of presenting the Young Investigator Award, which is an award given by the ASRS Foundation in honor of past ASRS presidents for those who are 50 years or younger and have already contributed a lot to our field and has a promise of continuing to doing so.

For me, without research, we cannot provide all these novel therapies that are effective and safe for our patients. Without research, our field cannot move forward and our patients cannot keep their eyesight and in the end our patients lose out. It is only with these promoting and mentoring our young investigators, our young colleagues, that are future of the retina field is held brighter.

I want my patients, our patients, to see for a lifetime and that requires new therapeutic agents, new devices, new imaging modalities, new ways of thinking, new approaches, maybe thinking outside the box. All of these can be done through supporting our young investigators.

This year’s Young Investigator Award went to Dr. Peter Campbell of Oregon Health Sciences. Pete is doing amazing things with the youngest of our patients, namely children who have retinopathy of prematurity and he already has done a lot in developing devices for imaging as well as incorporating artificial intelligence to analyze the images that have been obtained and is collaborating nationally and internationally with others who are of the like mind.

I also had the honor of delivering the inaugural Dr. Gil Grant Fellowship Award to Dr. Michael Yu from Wills, who is really poised to make a difference in our field based on his stellar past record and promise for the future. We hope that others will also be like-minded and provide additional endowed awards through ASRS to encourage these young minds for the future of retina and our retina patients all around the world. With mentoring we can help this happen. With providing awards such as this, we are encouraging them to go on and to greater things for us.