Dr Lauren Ayton is a clinician-scientist with research interest in retinal disease, low vision and vision restoration. After completing her professional training in Optometry and a PhD at the University of Melbourne, Dr Ayton completed postdoctoral training in the area of ocular motor assessment in traumatic brain injury. She then took a position at the Centre for Eye Research Australia, where she was the Bionic Eye Clinical Team Leader and worked on a number of projects in age-related macular degeneration.

 

Between 2017 and 2019, Dr Ayton was the Director of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs at Bionic Eye Technologies, Inc., a USA startup company affiliated with Harvard and Cornell Universities. This experience cemented Dr Ayton’s passion for research innovation and entrepreneurship. Dr Ayton is now a Director of SPARK Melbourne, a University-led research incubator and industry mentoring program that originated from Stanford University.

 

Dr Ayton has an international reputation in the field of vision restoration, having been a lead investigator on both local and international vision prosthesis (“bionic eye”) programs, including Bionic Vision Australia, Monash Vision Group and the Boston Retinal Implant Project (Harvard). She is the founder and Co-Chair of the HOVER taskforce, which will soon publish gold standards on the assessment of patient outcomes in vision restoration trials. Currently, she is collaborating with Dr Thomas Edwards and Prof Keith Martin (CERA) on new gene therapy programs for inherited retinal degenerations. Dr Ayton’s research group also work on non- invasive low vision interventions, such as electronic aids and sensory substitution devices. In 2017, Dr Ayton was awarded a NHMRC Fellowship to translate her research in age-related macular degeneration to practicing clinicians. With long-time collaborator, Prof Robyn Guymer, Dr Ayton is currently working on ways to communicate the most recent research findings in AMD to optometrists, including information on risk assessment, imaging biomarkers and management strategies. Dr Ayton returned to the University of Melbourne in 2019, and is now the Head of the Vision Optimisation Unit within the Departments of Optometry and Vision Science, and Surgery (Ophthalmology).

Dr Ayton is currently a NHMRC Medical Research Future Fund Next Generation Clinical Fellow and a Driving Research Momentum Fellow at the University of Melbourne.