Professor Matthew Simunovic

Matthew Simunovic is a surgeon-scientist with clinical and research training in diseases of the retina. His research addresses the leading causes of irreversible blindness in children and adults via translational research encompassing laboratory investigations through to clinical trials. Clinically, his interests include adult and paediatric medical retina and vitreoretinal surgery. He is actively engaged in clinical teaching as director of the vitreoretinal fellowship at Sydney Eye Hospital and as a volunteer for Sight for All, a non-profit organisation that delivers care and training to under-served areas of Southeast Asia. Prof. Simunovic’s research on patients with inherited retinal disease led to the development of a computer-based test of colour discrimination, which is currently in use at the National Institutes of Health, UCL/Moorfields Eye Hospital and the University of Oxford. He was the first vitreoretinal surgeon to perform approved retinal gene therapy in the Southern Hemisphere (Luxturna) and he is the principal investigator of the Fight Inherited Retinal Blindness! Registry, which tracks real-world outcomes of this therapy. He and his colleagues identified Streptococcus spp. as a leading cause of post-procedural intraocular infections, leading to best-practice updates addressing the likely source, which in turn have driven decreased infection rates. His work on sub-retinal injection has characterised its effects on visual function, has provided the first means of tracking drug distribution following this manoeuvre and has established the preferred surgical approach for consistent, reliable delivery of retinal gene therapy. He has been elected to the Macula Society and the American Ophthalmological Society (the oldest ophthalmology scholarly society in the World). To date, Prof. Simunovic has secured >$4 million in research funding as principal investigator. He is the first Australian ophthalmologist to be supported by a career development award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness, USA and is the first vitreoretinal surgeon to be appointed to a professorship at the University of Sydney, where he leads the Retinal Disease and Rescue Group.