The International Society of Contact Lens Specialists (ISCLS) has elected Perth optometrist Damon Ezekiel as its President. This is the first time the leadership of the 65 year old organisation has been awarded to an Australian.
The ISCLS, the world’s first international contact lens society, comprises pioneers and global leaders in the practice, development and advancement of contact lenses. Mr. Ezekiel, who owns Ezekiel Eyes in Nedlands Perth, took over as President at the Society’s 46th Congress in Washington DC recently.
The ISCLS has elected Perth optometrist Damon Ezekiel as its President… the first time… to an Australian
Awarded Herschel Medal
While at the Congress, Mr. Ezekiel and British optometrist, Caroline Hodd, were awarded the prestigious Herschel Medal.
The Herschel Medal is named after English astronomer Sir John Herschel, who first proposed the idea of making a mold of a person’s eyes, to enable the production of corrective lenses that could conform to the front surface of the eye.
It was awarded to Mr. Ezekiel and Ms. Hodd, “in recognition of outstanding original contributions to contact lens design techniques and of fitting and application in clinical practice, in the education of students and in the advancement of the status of contact lens practice”. Ms. Hodd is the only woman to have designed and marketed a contact lens to help people with unusual eye conditions.
Family History in Contact Lenses
The Ezekiel family has a strong history in contact lens innovation. Mr. Ezekiel’s father, Don Ezekiel AM, was a contact lens inventor and an optometrist in Perth. Now retired, he invented and produced the world’s first gas permeable scleral contact lens and was awarded the Herschel Medal in 2005.
In addition to owning and managing Ezekiel Eyes, Damon Ezekiel is a contact lens consultant to research organisations and lectures and conducts workshops in contact lens practice, including the fitting of all types of rigid gas permeable contact lenses, including orthokeratology, scleral lenses and soft bifocal, multi-focal and cosmetic contact lenses. He undertakes voluntary work in Vietnam and Cambodia on behalf of eye charity Sight For All.
Mr. Ezekiel said he was proud and humbled to be elected President of the ISCLS. “The ISCLS reflects the best of the best in contact lens practice around the world; these are the men and women who wrote many of the textbooks students now use. They are practitioners who have revolutionised the treatment of eye conditions, and their work has improved the quality of life of thousands of patients over many decades,” he said.