In the Hot Seat - Professor James Wolffsohn

Past president of the BCLA, Professor James Wolffsohn, Head of Optometry at the School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University was awarded a personal Chair in 2007, making him one of the youngest professors in the United Kingdom.  James talks to Jane Macnaughton about life at Aston, his current research interests and why his friends consider him a workaholic.

What is your current role and title?
Optometry Convenor (Head), Aston University. Professor

What are your responsibilities?
Overall responsibility for Optometry at Aston, in particular the teaching programme and staff development.

How long have you been there?
Nearly 8 years

What are your specific clinical/academic interests?
Contact lenses, intraocular lenses, eye focus and low vision

Are you involved in anything innovative and exciting at the moment?
Our team are at the forefront of new intraocular lens, designed to restore eye focus in presbyopes, to enhance optical quality and to reduce retinal damage related to conditions such as AMD.

Are you involved in anything that you feel will have an impact upon the course of optometry in the future?
These intraocular lenses have the potential to revolutionise optometry. Clear lens extraction (removal of a clear non-cataractous crystalline lens) is already occurring to correct refractive error not amenable to other types of refractive surgery). In the future, as presbyopia occurs, one could overcome the possibility of ever having cataracts and restore eye focus by having an accommodating intraocular lens implanted. Optometrists will be involved in deciding with the patient the best presbyopia correction option for them, pre and post-operative assessment, intraocular lens imaging and detection of complications.

What prompted you to study optometry?
A broad interest in science and a friend’s parent who was an Optometrist.

Where did you study and train?
Undergraduate degree at UMIST, pre-reg at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital

What is your overriding memory of your pre-registration or student years?
Fantastic fellow students and a final year dinner where we all dressed as lecturers and performed songs from Grease!

When you qualified what did you do next?
PhD at Cardiff University and post-doc in Melbourne, Australia

Who in the profession do you admire and why?
Where does one start. There are so many fantastic high profile people who make UK and worldwide Optometry such a fantastic field to work in.

What other roles within the profession have you held or do you currently hold?
President of the British Contact Lens Association (BCLA) 2005-6, distance learning programme coordinator of the International Association of Contact Lens Educators (IACLE), member of the British Council of Optometry (BUCO)

Which role has been the most rewarding?
Being Head of Optometry at Aston as we have a fabulous staff and a real commitment and drive to drive innovation and enhance the student learning experience and environment

What led you to become BCLA President?
In my roles as a contact lens and anterior eye researcher and educator I was able to bring a broad range of experience and expertise to the post.

What do you feel was your main contribution to this role?
The introduction of the BCLA Fellowship. Members who can demonstrate their esteem in the field of contact lenses and the anterior eye can now be awarded the right to append FBCLA after their name. This award was designed to encourage and reward excellence in contact lens fitting and management of the anterior eye. There is huge potential in the UK to expand the contact lens market, which brings huge job satisfaction (and financial reward) to those who choose to ‘specialise’.

How did the Low Vision Manual come about?
The Low Vision Manual had been under production for many years before my involvement. I was invited to help to move things along and then to become an editor. It was great to work alongside my good friend Jonathan Jackson.

Has the success of the manual had an impact upon the work that you are currently involved in?
A Japanese version has proposed (luckily I don’t have to learn Japanese) which will involve looking into some of the specific low vision regulations and issues in Japan. My low vision research is always informing my clinical views and will hence form part of future revisions of the book.

What was one of your greatest challenges?
Achieving an appropriate work life balance, never easy when work is also a hobby

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment in life?
Being awarded a personal chair (Professorship) aged 35.

What is your greatest weakness?
Taking on too many ‘projects’!

What is important to you?
My family

Where is ‘home?’
Nuneaton

Where do you go to relax?
The garden

Best film?
The Rock

Have you ever done anything dangerous?
Climbed volcanoes and white water rafting in South America . . .

How would your friends describe you?
A work-a-holic

If you had to live your life over again, what one thing would you change?
Nothing

What still interests you about optometry?
The huge potential for Optometrists to be become more clinician than the all too often technician

What challenges do you look for in the future of optometry?
Unity and drive in the profession to move on from the limitations of the NHS sight-test to embrace specialist services such as therapeutics, dry eye and ocular allergy management, and low vision.