Nathan Efron

Nathan Efron completed his BScOptom and PhD at the University of Melbourne in 1981, and after two years of post-doctoral studies in Berkeley, USA and Sydney, he returned to Melbourne as lecturer then senior lecturer responsible for contact lens education. In 1990 he took up the foundation Chair of Clinical Optometry at the University of Manchester, England, and established a contact lens research and consultancy unit known as Eurolens Research. In Manchester, he served as Head of Department from 1992-97 and Dean of Research for the university from 2001-2004, and was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Science in 1995. Professor Efron returned to Australia in 2006 and joined the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation in the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), as Research Professor. At QUT he established the Anterior Eye Laboratory where, as well as continuing his contact lens research, he began exploring a range of novel ophthalmic markers of diabetic neuropathy. Professor Efron attracted significant peer-reviewed competitive funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, George Weaber Trust and American Optometric Foundation. He previously served as President of the Cornea and Contact Lens Society of Australia (1981), the British Contact Lens Association (1997) and the Australian College of Optometry (2013-2016). He is currently Editor of the journal Clinical and Experimental Optometry and Vice-President of the International Society for Contact Lens Research. He lectures extensively world-wide, particularly in the field of the ocular response to contact lens wear, and has published over 1,000 scientific papers, abstracts and textbook chapters, and has written/edited 7 books that have appeared in a total of 18 editions and foreign translations. His most recent title is ‘Contact Lens Complications, 4th Edition’ (Elsevier, 2019). Professor Efron has won a number of prestigious national and international awards, including the ‘Contribution to Optics’ award (Optician, UK, 1997); the British Contact Lens Association’s Dallos Award (1992) and Gold Medal (2001); the Peter Abel Award (Association of German Contact Lens Specialists, 2000); the American Academy of Optometry’s Garland W Clay Award (1980), Max Schapero Award (2003) and Glenn A Fry Award (2010); Optometry Australia’s J. Lloyd Hewett Award (2013) and H Barry Collin Research Medal (2015); the Kenneth W Bell Medal of the Cornea and Contact Lens Society of Australia (2015); and the Ruben Medal of the International Society for Contact Lens Research (2017). In 2015, Professor Efron was made a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia, which is Australia's highest civilian honour.