The Vaegan seminar series in 2024 saw a total of seven distinguished speakers presenting to staff, students and friends of SOVS at UNSW Sydney.
In April, Dr Alejandro Martin-Gomez (Johns Hopkins University) presented his Vaegan seminar entitled “Visual Perception, Extended Reality, and their Transferability into Medical Applications”. He shared in this remotely delivered presentation his work on the application of VR to different forms of sensory-motor health projects.
In May, Professor James S Wolffsohn (Aston University) presented an in-person Vaegan seminar, where he provided an overview of how technology has been used in many areas of eye care to improve assessments and treatment, and the evidence for technology being utilised to inform better evidence-based patient management.
In May, we also held a very special hybrid Vaegan seminar: In memoriam - Professor Alison McDermott which was presented by Prof Mark Willcox (SOVS UNSW Sydney). Professor McDermott was awarded her PhD in Biochemistry by the University of London, Imperial College in 1991 then went on to conduct post-doctoral research at Cornell University, McMaster University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Following a successful career of other roles, she returned to her native UK as Professor at Northumbria University, where she taught immunology and pathology to biomedical science students and continued her research on the ocular surface in health and disease until her retirement.
Also in May, Dr Dimitra Makrynioti (University of Patras, Greece) presented an in-person Vaegan on how the Optician-Optometrist’s role in Greece is not easy. She shared her Optometry Odyssey journey, which has been, so far, full of adventures!
In July, Dr Ushasree Pattamatta (Westmead Institute for Medical Research) presented a Vaegan sharing breakthroughs in how an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) has neuroprotective properties and can successfully halt retinal ganglion cell (RGC) death in mice via ex vivo and in vivo glaucoma models.
In September, Dr Bruno Herbelin (EPFL Neuro-X Institute) showed us how cognitive neuroscience of bodily self-consciousness provides the keys for understanding the phenomena of virtual embodiment and virtual presence, and thus to design efficient VR interaction. This includes characterising the limits of agency under full-body motion tracking as well as studying the alterations of embodiment caused by self-contact or perspective change.
In October 2024, Dr Dinesh Subedi (Monash University) enlightened us on bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, were discovered before antibiotics such as penicillin and were used to treat diseases. He presented his research in this area and discussed the future use of bacteriophages from diverse perspectives including industry.
