Dr. Kwadwo Owusu Akuffo, a Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Optometry and Visual Science, College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, has won the 2022 George Britton Early Investigator of the Year award.

The award was presented to him at the Brain and Ocular Nutrition (BON) Conference held in Downing College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom.

The George Britton Early Investigator of the Year award aims to showcase and celebrate the exceptional achievements and successes of early career researchers.

Dr. Akuffo received an unrestricted research grant of €2,000, kindly sponsored by MacuHealth, a pharmaceutical company that provides industry-leading eye care supplements for patients).

At the conference, Dr. Akuffo presented his scientific paper entitled "Macular Pigment Optical Density in a Healthy Ghanaian Sample."

The abstract of this work has been published in the Journal of Alzheimer's disease (https://content.iospress.com/journals/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/88/s1).

Furthermore, he co-chaired the Early Investigator Society (EIS) invited speaker session: Thoughts on intellectual resilience and self-belief.

Dr. Akuffo completed his Doctor of Optometry (OD) degree in 2011 at KNUST and obtained his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in 2017 at the Nutrition Research Centre Ireland (www.nrci.ie), Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland.

His research focuses on ophthalmic epidemiology and ocular nutrition. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry (AAO), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Young Affiliate and an Affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences.

He is also a member of the Ghana Science Association (GSA), Ghana Young Academy (GhYA), Ghana Optometric Association (GOA), and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). Dr. Akuffo has published over 40 scientific peer-reviewed articles and contributed to several conference proceedings.

He is an Associate Editor for Springer Nature's BMC Ophthalmology journal and a reviewer for several ophthalmic journals.