Silver Medal Award 

The Fincham Medal: Past Winners

A Silver medal was introduced in commemoration of the contribution to ophthalmic optics of brothers Walter and Edgar Fincham. The medal was designed to honour exceptional work by people “mid-career.”  Six Fincham medals have been awarded to date, to:

Professor Neville McBrien PhD, FAAO, MCOptom, FBDO (1995) – for his research into myopia, and in particular how the abnormal growth of the eye is controlled in pathological myopia.

Dr Ian Flitcroft MA, DPhil, FRCOphth (2002) – for his research on human accommodation, especially the nature of the visual stimuli that drive accommodation and the relationship between binocular vision and accommodation reflex.

Professor Robin Ali PhD (2004) – for his pioneering work on gene therapy, which revealed that animal vision could be sustained and improved in animals with inherited retinal diseases by introducing normal genes using a viral vector.

Dr James Bainbridge PhD FRCOpth (2009) – for his successful trial of gene therapy in treating a particular form of genetically induced blindness in humans.

Professor Alan Stitt PhD (2017) – for his research on diabetic retinopathy and age-related retinal disease and his pioneering work on re-vascularising ischaemic retina.

Professor Shahina Pardhan (2024) – for her research into the global visual impact of diabetic retinopathy on eye health and vision and how vision loss affects navigation through environments, and for her continuing work championing equity and diversity in science.