Cris Jacoba, MD, and Konstantina Sampani, MD, both fellows at the Beetham Eye Institute at Joslin Diabetes Center, placed first and second, respectively, in the New England Ophthalmological Society annual Hecht poster contest for residents and fellows.Dr. Jacoba was awarded first prize for his poster, "Automated machine learning models for diabetic retinopathy screening using handheld fundus cameras in a low-resource community screening program," and the second prize went to Dr. Sampani for her poster, "Association of capillary plexus vessel density with risk of proliferative diabetic retinopathy in eyes with advanced nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy."
Drs. Jacoba and Sampani also recently received fellowships to support their research and communications efforts. Dr. Jacoba received the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2022 Science Communications Training Fellowship. The one-year program—awarded to just 20 ARVO members—trains young scientists to become more effective communicators of vision research to all audiences. Dr. Sampani received the Joslin Diabetes Center 2021-2022 Mary K. Iacocca Senior Fellowship to support her research project: "Effect of flicker-light stimulation on human retinal neurovascular coupling with advanced multimodality imaging techniques in patients with type 1 diabetes."