The meeting was held at the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre from 16 – 19 February 2005.

Once again, the meeting received an overwhelming response with 526 abstracts submitted by young researchers, clinicians and invited speakers from 36 different countries (at our First SERI-ARVO Meeting, a total of 353 abstracts were presented).

A total of 148 symposium presentations, which included no less than 60 invited international speakers, addressed the important clinical and translational aspects of vision and ophthalmic research, which included topics on Angiogenesis, Angiography, Stem Cell Biology, Genetics, Immunology, Inflammation and Infection, Epidemiology, Visual Psychophysics and Physiological Optics, as well as subspecialty symposia on Ocular Surface, Cornea, Dry Eye, Cataract/Lens, Uveitis, Glaucoma, Retina, Myopia and Refractive Surgery.

ARVO is the largest vision and research organization in the world, and this year, a special ARVO Symposium entitled “Hot Topics in Eye and Vision Research” were presented by a scientific delegation from ARVO, led by Gary W. Abrams, President of ARVO. In addition, a total of 6 Plenary Lectures highlighting important research advances in the major subspecialty fields were delivered by leading international vision researchers from around the globe.

The pre-meeting workshops focusing on the design and conduct of eye research was also well received. The topics were expanded and included a basic research workshop introducing emerging technologies such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, a clinical workshop on the conduct of randomized controlled trials and a highly popular workshop on pearls in grant writing, in writing scientific manuscripts, and how to avoid pitfalls in oral or poster presentations.

For the first time, selected abstracts from the meeting were compiled and printed as a supplement to the prestigious journal, American Journal of Ophthalmology with an impact factor of 2.258.

In the spirit of encouraging young doctors and scientists in research, the SERI-ARVO Meeting again awarded a total of 40 SERI-ARVO Travel Awards with funds generously donated by industry sponsors such as Allergan, Bausch & Lomb, Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society.

The meeting also awarded young researchers for outstanding clinical or basic ophthalmic research presented at the meeting. The Outstanding Awards for the basic and clinical categories went to Ms Clare S McCarthy of Australia and Dr Pravin Krishna Vaddavalli of India respectively. Drs Leonard Ang and Marcus Lim of the Singapore National Eye Centre received the Merit Awards for the basic and clinical categories respectively.

Overall, the meeting was again judged a significant success my many attendees, and several compliments were received from the delegates and speakers. More than 700 people from 36 countries attended the meeting. Participants completed a meeting evaluation form and out of the 193 forms received, 188 of them would like to see the meeting held again; 192 of them found the meeting to be useful. Many participants also sent compliments to the organizing committee after the event. A summary of the compliments is attached.