Kate has achieved four professional fellowships which give her internationally recognised expertise in contact lens practice, general optometry and teaching. Kate’s particular areas of specialty are children’s vision, binocular vision (management of eye coordination disorders which affect school, work and sport) and contact lenses, including Ortho-K. 

She is a clinical instructor and visiting lecturer at QUT, a national board member for Optometry Australia, and still finds time to work in her own practice  in Brisbane.

Currently head of optometry at University of Auckland, Steven’s research activities include face recognition, and symmetry perception, contour integration, second-order vision, motion, and crowding 

While at Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London he developed psychophysical techniques for measuring reading speed and the effect of basic typography and word-shape distortions on reading speed.  Later work extends to visual optotypes, investigating abnormal visual processing in chronic schizophrenia and imaging the cortical and sub-cortical areas involved in crowding.

Julie is a therapeutically qualified clinical optometrist with a PhD in dry eye, tear film and ocular surface disease.

She teachers a large component of the didactic and practical aspects of the QUT Ocular Therapeutics course and until recently had worked exclusively in ophthalmology consulting and surgery centres. Julie has significant experience in the diagnosis and management of anterior segment disease and an extensive publication record in this area.

An associate professor in Ophthalmology, at Auckland University Department of Opthalmology, Dipika is internationally recognised for her research on in vivo confocal microscopy of the living human cornea. Her portfolio includes other forms of anterior segment imaging, microbial keratitis, cataract physiology, and investigating potential therapeutic applications for corneal stem cells.

Andrew is an optometrist practising in Wellington. He started practising orthokeratology in 2002 and has recently been gaining some experience with the use of mini-scleral lenses and hybrid lenses in the management of keratoconic and post-graft patients. He is presently practising at Stevenson Sangster and Matthews, where he worked alongside Peter Stevenson (until his retirement) for 22 years. The practice has a heritage of contact lens specialty since the early 1960s and Andrew has subsequently inherited many challenging cases as well has finding a few of his own along the way.

Steven Dakin