Bielschowsky-Gesellschaft für Schielforschung und Neuroophthalmologie
Promotionspreis 2008
Laudatio
Dear Seyhan Özkan, dear Dagmar Verlohr dear Oliver Ehrt, dear colleagues
I would like to welcome you on behalf of the executive committee of the Bielschowsky Society. It`s a great honour for Germany and especially for our organization that the ESA has chosen München as place for the thirty-second meeting. We are proud, that one of our most prominent members, Oliver Ehrt, was asked to organize this meeting and we highly appreciate the work that he and his team have accomplished here.
During this meeting the Bielschowsky Society has organized a symposium, on the Etiopathological Aspects of Strabism and Motility Disorders, which will be held tomorrow. This symposium will draw a line from the role of genes and palisade endings in strabism to the aetiopathology of congenital ocular elevation deficiencies, congenital fibrosis, paretic disorders and Graves’ ophthalmopathy.
The Bielschowsky Society was founded in 1985 and named after Alfred Bielschowsky, who taught ophthalmology from 1912 to 1935 in Marburg and Breslau and after his emigration he founded the Dartmouth Eye Institute at the Dartmouth-Medical-School in Hanover, New Hampshire. For our organization he is a brilliant symbol of scientific skill and personal integrity even when facing the darkest years of german history. The Bielschowsky Society is an organzation with only 166 members, yet it unites nearly all german-speaking enthusiasts of strabismological research and neuro-ophthalmology. A list of the meetings we organized is presented here and I would like to take this opportunity to cordially invite you to our next congress which will be organized by Dr. Besch in Tübingen in November 21st-22nd, 2009.
In order to encourage young researchers, the Bielschowsky Society has established two awards: the Bielschowsky science award (5000 Euro) and the Bielschowsky doctoral thesis award (500 Euro). I am very pleased to present you the winner of this year’s doctoral thesis award: Dr. Hedwig Forster In cooperation Markus Preising and Birgit Lorenz in Regensburg she performed a Molecular Genetic Screening of Patients with Albinism for Mutations in P-Gene, TYR, and OA1.
This study was designed to identify the fraction of patients presenting with ocular and oculocutaneous albinism caused by mutations in the genes TYR, P, and OA1. 125 patients diagnosed with albinism were subjected to molecular genetic screening. Her thesis gave us new insights into the correlation of various types of albinism with mutations of the mentioned genes.
Again allow me to welcome you all on behalf of the BG and I wish you all a good time in München and many productive and maybe even controverse discussions on this 32. meeting of the ESA.
Prof. Dr. med. Joachim Esser
Federführendes Mitglied der Vergabekommission