News

Hendrik Scholl, Director of IOB’s Clinical Center, has been selected to receive the 2024 Kupfer Award of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). He is the first European recipient to be honored with the prestigious award. 

Martin Munz and Arjun Bharioke, from the IOB’s Central Visual Circuits group, headed by IOB Director Botond Roska, just published a paper entitled Pyramidal neurons form active, transient, multilayered circuits perturbed by autism-associated mutations at the inception of neocortex in Cell. In an interview they talk about their main findings and highlights of the study.

The annual Stephen J. Ryan Initiative for Macular Research (RIMR) Conference invites recognized researchers from diverse fields to discuss critical challenges and opportunities in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) research. This year, the meeting was held March 28-30 in Irvine, California, and the RIMR Board of Directors invited two researchers from IOB.

Stefan Spirig, researcher in our Human Retinal Circuits Group, receives the ARVO-SWISS Travel Grant for his participation in the ARVO Annual Meeting 2023 in New Orleans after handing in his abstract titled Cell type focused, high-throughput compound screen in human retinal organoids reveals targets to counteract cone photoreceptor degeneration.

In an Ophthalmology Times article, Prof. Hendrik Scholl discusses medical innovations and challenges in the field of ophthalmology, as well as the latest research findings he presented in his keynote lecture at the 14th Annual Congress on Controversies in Ophthalmology in Lisbon, Portugal.

Karolina Kaminska, researcher in the Ophthalmic Genetics Group, talks about the newly published study The first genetic landscape of inherited retinal dystrophies in Portuguese patients identifies recurrent homozygous mutations as a frequent cause of pathogenesis and the main findings of this project. 

The group supports the SECB in its advisory tasks related to the approval of clinical trials of gene therapy. 

In a guest lecture at the Singapore National Eye Centre, Prof. Scholl will discuss the possibilities of curing blindness through the use of cone optogenetics and the latest findings in ophthalmic research.

Konstantin Gugleta is a glaucoma specialist at the Ophthalmology Department of the University Eye Hospital Basel. He is responsible for the patient care and research in the field of glaucoma and answers our questions about the eye disease.

Philippe Valmaggia, leading scientist of the study “Iris color matters – a contractility analysis with dynamic volume-rendered optical coherence tomography pupillometry” explains the aim and main results of this research project. 

Dario was diagnosed with Usher syndrome when he was sixteen years old. By telling his story he wants to encourage other people who are affected by rare genetic diseases to talk about their condition.

Mathieu Quinodoz wins a prize from PRO RETINA Deutschland and Retina Suisse for the project “Analysis of missense variants in the human genome reveals widespread gene-specific clustering and improves prediction of pathogenicity”.

As part of its new PhD and MD-PhD Program on Translational Visual Neurosciences, IOB offers fellowships to outstanding candidates from diverse fields such as Biology, Medicine, Physics, Computer Sciences and Engineering.

From 26 to 27 September the first International Conference Ethics of Engineering Life (ICEEL) takes place in Rome. On 27 September, Botond Roska and Hendrik Scholl will both give a talk during the ICEEL about vision restoration and the clinical perspective on gene therapy. 

Every second Friday of the past year, members of the IOB had the opportunity to present their current projects in front of an internal audience and jury. We are happy to announce this year’s recipients of the Friday seminar best talk award.

For her research on myopia, Barbara Swiatczak, a postdoctoral researcher in our Myopia Research Group has received the Swiss OphthAward 2022 in the Category Highest Clinical Relevance.