Eyeworld

Cornea Society News – published quarterly by the Cornea Society 2 President's message Dear Cornea Society members, A s we are at the halfway point of 2018, I can confidently say that the Cornea Society Board has been hard at work. Cornea Day at the ASCRS•ASOA Annual Meeting, our most visible effort, was a resounding success and is a testament to the cooperative effort between the Cornea Society and the ASCRS Cornea Clinical Committee. I had the sincere pleasure of working with my counterpart, Francis Mah, MD, chair of the ASCRS Cornea Clinical Committee. It is always a wonderful experience. Thank you to all of the speakers and moderators for your countless hours of work. A special thank you to Marian Macsai, MD, and Dr. Mah, this year's organizers, for a job well done, and on behalf of the Cornea Society, our deepest appreciation to the staff and leader- ship of ASCRS for an incredibly successful ongoing collaboration over the years. Behind the scenes, the leadership of the Cornea Society is continuing our efforts to rework and reimagine the structure of the Society to make it both more efficient and more flexible to meet the needs of future years. We will soon begin an in-depth process of examining our organizational structure to open new opportunities for contribution and leadership by our membership. As a first step, the Board is unanimously recommending a change to the bylaws that will separate the secretary/trea- surer role into two separate positions with different lengths of service. As the Society's finances and activities have become more complex, the need for a separate treasurer to provide continuity for the Society has become obvious to those of us who have served in that position. Please see the accompanying article on the next page and keep an eye out for an email ballot coming to your inbox soon. I think that we can all agree that the last decade has been an incredibly exciting time to be a cornea specialist with revolutionary changes in diagnostics and medical and surgical therapy that many of could not have imagined in our fellowships even a short time before. While all of these innovations started as inspiration, the Cornea Society recognizes the hard work and research efforts that have been required to develop these into tools to benefit our patients. For this reason, Bennie Jeng, MD, will be leading an effort to create a mechanism to identify and support novel corneal research in the near future. New tools often come with unique problems, however. The Cornea Soci- ety recently participated in a meeting with a number of other organizations including the AAO, ASCRS, and indus- try to discuss the difficulties in providing crosslinking to our patients. The issues are complex, but be assured that the Cornea Society is taking an active role in advocating for our members and their patients to transcend what has been a confusing and frustrating process. Finally, Cornea360! We are very excited to launch Cornea360, a first of its kind national cornea meeting to be held in Phoenix, Arizona in 2019. Cornea360 represents a collaborative effort among the Cornea Society, APEX, and CEDARS/ASPEN, which promises to be a unique, intimate, highly interactive event about everything and anything related to cornea and the ocular surface. The organizing committee of Marian Macsai, MD, Joseph Tauber, MD, Kenneth Beckman, MD, and I have designed a program that will be immersive and relevant to cornea specialists at all levels. We hope the meeting will introduce new concepts and techniques, challenge conventional wisdom, and provide a glimpse into the future technologies and therapeutics that will form the basis of our practices in the years to come. Visit www.Cornea360.org for more information. See you in Phoenix! Elmer Tu, MD, president, Cornea Society Elmer Tu, MD

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