RANZCO chair Prof Peter McCluskey AO awarding A/Prof Graham Wilson the Colleges Distinguished Service Medal at RANZCO 2025 in Melbourne

The 56^th RANZCO Congress graduation and awards ceremony was a glittering affair of gowns, pomp and ceremony. Welcoming everyone, RANZCO president Professor Peter McCluskey AO awarded RANZCO fellowships to 38 new graduates and 11 specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs), including 15 from New Zealand. Remember you are not alone, he said. “You're part of a strong, supportive RANZCO community. Look out for your peers, collaborate generously, lean on one another – collegiality is not a luxury in medicine, it’s our foundation... Lead with your hearts as well as your hands. Go forward with courage, with kindness and with open minds.”

Announcing this year’s award winners, new fellows will find none better if they are looking for inspirational role models, he said:

• Honorary Fellowship – Professor Robyn Jamieson, for her pioneering work in genetically determined eye disease.
  
  
• College Medal – Associate Professor Heather Mack AM and Dr David Kaufman.
  
  
• Distinguished Service Medal, recognising contributions to the college, ophthalmology or the community that exhibit such exceptional devotion of time, effort, thought and action as to set them apart from other contributions – Associate Professor Graham Wilson.
  
  

Distinguished Service Medal – A/Prof Graham Wilson

Reading his abridged citation, Dr Sheng Chiong Hong said his South Island colleague, A/Prof Graham Wilson, is not only a highly skilled clinician and surgeon but a transformative educator. “Being a pioneer of The Dunedin study, the Annual Dunedin RANZCO Advanced Clinical Examination (RACE) Course and the Sydney Microsurgical Courses, his contributions to research, registrar training and structured teaching programmes have raised the standards of education, ensuring that learning is not only rigorous but also deeply relevant to the evolving needs of modern eyecare.”

A/Prof Wilson said he was both humbled and honoured by the award. “We have lots of colleagues going out of their way to teach and mentor trainees, so I guess I was just lucky to be selected.”

Developing both the Dunedin RACE and Sydney Microsurgical Courses was a big team effort, he said. And now, more than 30 years later, “40 registrars from all over New Zealand and Australia gather each year to prepare for the exam and bond in their suffering”, while 300 juniors have been put through their microskills paces since the first microsurgical course in 2018. “We are so fortunate to have such a great topic to teach. The eye is so beautiful and fascinating. If you teach someone to see the retina for the first time or to place their first corneal suture, then you are passing on a wonderful gift... Teaching is such a great form of giving, which is so important in this world.”

(Back L-R) Drs Samuel Newlands, Reid Ferguson, Paul Sia, Bia Kim, Baswati Sahoo, Stefano Guglielmetti, Lior Lipsky and Malcolm Carey and (front) Drs Lucy Lu, Yu-Chieh Hung, Pragnya Jagadish, Tiffany Ma, Ellen Tyler, Sophie Hill

Other awards

• Trainer of Excellence New Zealand – Dr Alexandra Crawford.
  
  
• Best Ophthalmic Surgery Film – Dr Alexandra Manta Tendon for ‘Sparing lower eyelid elevation for combined reconstructive and aesthetic outcomes’.
  
  
• Best Non-Surgical Film – Drs Chuen Yen Hong and Sheng Chiong Hong for ‘A portable robotic eye-testing device’.
  
  
• Gerard Crock Award for the Best Paper Presentation by a fellow – Dr Carla Abbott for ‘Genome-wide association study of the genetic risk of reticular pseudodrusen in AMD’.
  
  
• John Parr Award for the Best Paper Presentation by a trainee – Minsu Jung for ‘Predictors of success in phacoemulsification combined with iStent Inject surgery in 1,550 eyes’.
  
  
• Best Poster – Dr Maria Cabrera-Aguas for ‘The bacterial ocular surveillance system (BOSS): preliminary results from the 2019–2024 national report’.
  
  
• Travel grant awards: Dr Rachna Agarwal (India) for ‘Efficacy and safety of weekly EUGOGO protocol vs three-weekly low-dose intravenous methylprednisolone in thyroid eye disease’; Dr James Convill (UK) for ‘The developmental impact of ultra-low dose intravitreal bevacizumab on infants with retinopathy of prematurity at two years of age’; and Dr Grace Setiawan (Indonesia) for ‘Triple-pump vs quattro pump phacoemulsification system: a comparative analysis on endothelial cell safety and efficacy’.
  
  
• The Shirley & John Sarks Prize – Anthony Barrett for ‘The lifecycle of soft drusen: clinicopathological correlates and imaging implications in AMD’.
  
  
• RANZCO Sustainability Prize – Dr Sheng Chiong Hong.