Professor Tien Wong

Professor Tien Wong is Managing Director of the Centre for Eye Reserach Australia and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Melbourne. He is also the Director of the Retinal Vascular Imaging Centre within the Center for Eye Research Australia.

Professor Wong completed medical school at the National University of Singapore in 1992 and clinical ophthalmology training at the Singapore National Eye Centre in 2002. He has sub-speciality fellowship training in medical retina diseases at the University of Sydney, Australia. He holds a MPH (1997) and a PhD (2002) from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, USA. He has completed two research fellowships, first a fellowship in ophthalmic epidemiology at the Dana Center, Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and an American Diabetes Association fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2006 Tien Wong was promoted to full professor.

Professor Wong’s clinical and research expertise is in the area of retinal vascular diseases, including diabetic and hypertensive retinopathy, retinal vein occlusion, and age-related macular degeneration. Professor Wong’s particular research interest is in the relationship of retinal vascular signs as predictors of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Wong has published more than 150 peer-reviewed Medline indexed papers, including papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He has given more than 50 invited symposia and named lectures in Australia and around the world. He has been awarded competitive grants in excess of US$10M, and is the Principal Investigator of research projects in Australia, USA, and Singapore.

Professor Wong is on the Editorial Board of three major ophthalmology journals, the American Journal of Ophthalmology, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Ophthalmic Epidemiology. He is an elected Member of the Macula Society, and Chair of the Program Committee in the Clinical Epidemiology section of ARVO.

Professor Wong’s work has been recognized by numerous awards, including;

• the Amgen Medical Researcher Award in recognition of his outstanding work predicting the risk of heart disease using a simple eye scan (2007) ,
• the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Medical Research (2006)
• the Novartis Prize in Diabetes Young Investigator Award (2006),
• the Alcon Award (2006),
• the Woodward Medal from the University of Melbourne (2005),
• the Sandra Doherty Award from the American Heart Association (2004),
• the Outstanding Research Award from the National University of Singapore (2004),
• the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology Prevention of Blindness Award (2003),
• the Ten Outstanding Young Person of the World for “academic leadership in people younger than 40 years of age” (1999),
• the Scholz Award from the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute (1999), and
• the President's Scholarship from Singapore (1987).
  

In 2005, Professor Wong received a grant from the Victorian State government, Australia, under its highly competitive Science, Technology and Innovation Scheme to develop a $6M Retinal Vascular Imaging Centre (RetVIC).

A profile of Professor Tien Wong can be downloaded here.