I can’t believe I’ve been here for three months… My research and study leave has given me a terrific opportunity to reengage with UK-based vision research. In particular I’ve been working at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London to start a clinical trial of the treatment for amblyopia/lazy eye I developed with Manuela Bossi and others. The handheld gaming device we are using to rebalance children’s vision has now (finally) been approved as a medical device and we are close to being up and running. This is an exciting opportunity – made possible by generous financial support from Action Medical Research UK – and the collaboration with Moorfields means we have the potential to bring this to many children. I enjoyed presenting this and the other work we’ve been doing at École normale supérieure (Paris). While there Rachel and I took the opportunity to take Eli (5) and Ivy (4) to visit Euro Disneyland where we all had enormous fun queuing, haemorrhaging money and ultimately contracting gastric flu.
I am grateful to everyone in the school who has given me the opportunity to take this leave –a particular thanks to the management team, to Sam Schwarzkopf for picking up my teaching, to all the members of my lab for working so brilliantly and so independently (as always) in my absence. Finally thanks to John Phillips for doing a superb job as Acting Head. I am officially missing New Zealand and look forward to seeing you all in Auckland soon.