Congratulations to Institute of Ophthalmology student Dr Rosie Gilbert for being awarded a UCL Provost’s Award for Public Engagement for her project ‘Eating for Eye Health.’
Dr Gilbert is a Clinical Fellow and PhD research student at the IoO. She began her project after working in the macular degeneration clinic at Moorfields Eye Hospital and noticing the lack of treatment options for patients with ‘dry’ age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
‘Eating for Eye Health’ aimed to raise awareness about the benefits of good nutrition on eye health. The project consisted of a focus group session, in August 2016, and a cookery session in November 2015, for patients, their relatives and friends, with support from IoO clinicians and postgraduate students.
Dr Gilbert was supported by the UCL Public Engagement Unit’s Beacon Bursary. She also worked with Susana Irving, a clinical and research nutritionist at University College Trust and Barts Health Trust.
For this project, Dr Gilbert won the Student Award at the UCL Provost’s Awards for Public Engagement on 22nd February 2017. The Awards recognise the work that UCL’s students and staff are doing to connect their research and teaching to the wider world. The Public Engagement Unit team said of the Awards, ‘The winners embody a groundswell of enthusiasm for engagement work at UCL, showing that excellent engagement is at the heart of what UCL does: not only changing the lives of the communities around us, but also changing our research and teaching for the better.’
Dr Gilbert will be speaking about her project at the Pint of Science festival in May 2017. She is aiming to run another cookery project in autumn 2017 using funding from an additional award from the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement.
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