Eyeworld

34 | EYEWORLD | SPRING 2026 ASCRS NEWS About the physician Francis Mah, MD Scripps Health La Jolla, California Dr. Mah: I see getting involved as paying it forward. I know how impactful ASCRS has been for my professional career. It's a huge honor when someone asks you to participate, to have someone who wants to hear your opinions, to have something to give to our specialty, and to give something to the leadership and patients. It's something that I wanted to do to support the Society that's been so impactful to me. EyeWorld: How have you seen ASCRS evolve to best serve the needs of its members, and what do you foresee as its next evolution point? Dr. Mah: ASCRS has always been at the cutting edge. In the last few years, it has established the Digital Clinical Committee, which is currently exploring the intersection of anterior segment surgery with things like AI and robotic surgery, along with important topics like how EHRs and practices integrate to make us more efficient. Going forward, ASCRS will remain on top of the incremental advances that occur in our field. From a cornea perspective, cellular thera- py has a potential to be a huge revolution; the Cornea Clinical Committee has a white paper on this topic and it's working on its second white paper regarding perioperative dry eye. The Cataract and Refractive Surgery Clinical Committees are working on a joint paper with ESCRS about implant lenses to help standardize how we talk about these. I look forward to the Society keeping its membership informed on these important topics. EyeWorld: What are you looking forward to at the Annual Meeting? Dr. Mah: I welcome everyone to the Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. This is a unique opportunity in these times of change to reach out to the various government agencies and understand how they might impact anterior segment surgery. We're working hard on the program side to get different parts of the gov- ernment involved. Also, D.C. is a very attractive place to visit historically, and this year is the 250th year of our nation. I'm also excited to pass the torch of ASCRS President to Kevin M. Miller, MD. He has a lot of exciting ideas, so I hope everyone comes out and wishes him good luck and congratulations. ASCRS ANNUAL MEETING PREVIEW Outgoing President praises solid foundation on which ASCRS stands F rancis Mah, MD, has volunteered in various ASCRS positions in the last two decades, culminating this past year with the highest honor, serving as ASCRS President. Dr. Mah reflected on his time as ASCRS President and his experience with the Society overall. EyeWorld: While your tenure as president is coming to an end, you're still going to be part of the ASCRS Executive Board, which you've been a part of since becoming ASCRS Secretary. Before that you were chair of the ASCRS Cornea Clinical Committee. What have you gained from volunteering in leadership positions at ASCRS? Dr. Mah: I've come to appreciate the history of ASCRS and everyone involved with ASCRS to make it the organization that it is today. It's been a huge honor to be president, trying to not only uphold but further the mission of ASCRS. What has really impressed me is how important the staff is. The people who work for the Society clearly have a huge passion for helping doctors and ultimately their patients through this jour- ney of education with the mission of preserving, saving, and recovering vision. EyeWorld: Is there anything from your time as president that you're particularly proud of? Dr. Mah: In the past 5 years, we've been going through a transition with the help of physician and staff leadership to move our Society toward the future, strengthen its foundation, and to make everything more transparent for our mem- bers. We've continued to make great strides to solidify this foundation, from creating a leader- ship nominee process to establishing a formal onboarding process for new physicians joining leadership positions to creating a checklist of responsibilities for various positions. There has been an emphasis to set ASCRS up well for the future financially, and CME has really been sta- bilized. We have a CME Chair, and we're trying to lock down conflict of interest for our CME programming. Because of this, we're in a much stronger place today. EyeWorld: Why has volunteering with ASCRS been something you've made so much time for in your career?

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