ARVO week: networking, discovery — and adrenaline

by Paul Kaufman, MD, FARVO

On the plane heading home after ARVO and a post-ARVO meeting in Miami, I tried to collect a few thoughts. First, it was as busy a week as I have ever had — anywhere! Several mornings and evenings were spent with long-time collaborators and friends, working on manuscripts and presentations, all dealing with exciting new findings about the primate and human accommodative mechanism and presbyopia. The beauty, elegance and complexity of this entire system, designed to hone its function to perfection, continues to amaze me, as does my colleagues’ ability to hunt down new anatomical/physiological findings and relationships that one feels must be there, and indeed they are. Discovery is still the greatest joy in what we all do, and is why we do it. We live for the “a-ha” moments.

This was interspersed with two solid days of immersion into the world of retinal ganglion cells — how they live and how and why they die in development, aging and disease, and how we might influence the latter. The head-to-head scheduling of the two all-day symposia on Friday and Saturday (Elsevier’s 13^th Annual Vision Research Conference and the ARVO/Pfizer Ophthalmics Research Institute) offered both complementarity and frustration because one wanted to hear all of it and this was not possible. Nonetheless, the presentations, learning and discussions with our colleagues was terrific, cementing existing relationships and fostering new ones.

There were of course oral presentations and posters from our own group to sharpen and view throughout the week, taking a moment to enjoy the accomplishments of our students and junior and senior staff. As a colleague once said of his children, “they do grow up.”

There were many meetings — formal working ones related to IOVS with our associate editors and Editorial Board, and many less formal ones related to ongoing and new projects and grants with scientists from other institutions. And, after many years of not being able to do this, a bit of night-time hanging out and informal, impromptu dinners with small groups of my own departmental faculty and staff, and my research staff and collaborators — an intimacy and great pleasure that has escaped me for the past few years. This was managed even with attendance at more sessions and more of the formal award/keynote sessions than in prior years, and reminded me how very, very rich the ARVO experience has become. One cannot hope to encompass it all, but there is enough to satiate the most voracious appetite.

The casualty of course is sleep. Five hours was a good night, achieved only once or twice during the week, but adrenaline carries one a long way for a short while. My stores were depleted, but lasted one more evening for a community event immediately after I arrived home. Sleep beckoned and was accommodated thereafter, but it was a wonderful week even if the tank was empty at the end.

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