ARVO 2010 is over. This years ARVO was *insanely* busy. I thought that last years schedule was crazy busy with a submarine trip the week before ARVO followed by a students preliminary exam, but it seemed that this years schedule barely gave me room to breathe. Initially I had planned a trip down to the Dry Tortugas, but those plans fell apart in the couple of weeks leading up to ARVO. Given that ARVO will only be in Ft. Lauderdale for a couple more years, I am going to have to make that trip a reality, likely next year.
The week started off easily enough, though there are no longer any direct flights from SLC to FLL and alas, there were no upgrades this trip either. It seems that if you are flying through Atlanta, the only way you can expect an upgrade on Delta is if you are platinum or diamond level status.
Regardless, Felix, Scott, Robert and I flew out the day before Wolfgang’s pre-ARVO meeting, the 13th annual Vision Research conference that precedes ARVO. Unfortunately, not much time was available for photography outside of the meetings and most of the images in this blog entry will be at dinner or social events in the evenings such as the above images of the first night where we went out for a reasonably tasty dinner at Cafe de Paris. It was good, but perhaps the French do not make the best risotto…
We were most fortunate to be able to spend some time with Drs. Ueno, Yasuda, Kondo and their graduate student at one of our favorite places for dinner in Ft. Lauderdale, Johnny V’s. Unexpectedly, we also ran into Moran colleagues Deborah, Brenda and Greg while there.
The Moran Eye Center also hosted a social event one night with wonderful turnout and we owe it all to Brenda who organized and put it together. The food was good, the weather was perfect and the bar was open. My only complaint was that photography was super difficult because of the turtle-safe lights that went on making any and all photography exceedingly difficult. However, those are sacrifices that *must* be made so that the lighting is not intrusive to the nesting turtles on the beach. Turtle safe lights were actually a new concept to me It was good to see Heinz Wässle, Don Fox, Sam Wu, Steven DeVries, Barb Rohrer, Michael Redmond, my good friend Gale Pollock, Bob Molday and meet with Marius Ueffing for the first time.
Richard Masland was also awarded the much deserved Proctor award this year for his efforts to describe the components of the retina and their circuitry. He was introduced by his nominator and friend Heinz Wässle.
In addition to seminars, lectures and educational events, there are lots of posters at ARVO… Thousands of posters in fact that make for an amazing opportunity to study and learn from students, post-docs and faculty in both academia and industry. This year we had posters for Robert and I, Yanhua, Felix and our amazing undergraduate, Drew. The poster sessions are also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends and talk about science. I was fortunate this year to run into John O’Brien, Muna Naash, Eduardo Solessio, Yumiko Umino, Beatrice Tam, Orson Moritz, Matt LaVail, Michael Redmond, Toby Holmes, John Flannery, Steve Fliesler, Glenn Prusky, Sam Wu, Heinz Wassle, Barb Rohrer and many others in the poster sessions.
Our undergraduate Drew also gave a platform presentation that was outstanding, especially in light of 1) a power outage half way through his talk and 2) the speaker following him did not show up and he was asked to come back up to the platform and answer additional questions. Great job Drew!
Lots of opportunities to meet with folks outside of meetings as well including the opportunity to meet some peeps for the first time, my friend Nancy Parmalee.
You see all sorts of lizards down in Ft. Lauderdale, but this was the first time I’d seen an Iguana out in the city.
See you next year.
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