PhD Fellowship in Ophthalmology awarded

The Layton Vision Foundation’s inaugural PhD Fellowship in Ophthalmology has been awarded to Aparna Murali.  Aparna beat out a strong field of 18 applicants to secure the award, and will commenced her PhD studies in January of this year at the University of Queensland’s School of Medicine.  Aparna was the highest ranked science graduate from her undergraduate university and has worked for the last 2 years in genome studies in cardiovascular disease.  She will be moving to Brisbane to apply her skills to preventing and treating diabetes induced blindness.  Aparna is committed to a career in medical research and passionate about preventing blindness.  The project applies the knowledge of the human genome project to develop novel therapeutics and drugs to treat blindness.  In total her project will receive $95,000 over three and a half years to support her project, and through the Foundation’s partnership with the University of Queensland, further support of approximate $115,000 has also been secured to assist her development as a vision scientist.