UK researchers honoured in The Ophthalmologist Power List
Professor Gus Gazzard and Professor Anthony Khawaja have been recognised in The Ophthalmologist Power List 2026.
The list recognises individuals who have made a significant impact in the field in the last 12-18 months.
Both Professors are important supporters of Glaucoma UK, regularly providing their expertise to support the charity’s services and speaking at the charity’s events.
Gus, Director of Surgery and Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital, was Number One on the list. He was the chief investigator of the LiGHT trial, which Glaucoma UK part-funded, leading to a change in the NICE guidelines to recommend laser surgery as the first line of glaucoma treatment. He was also President of the UK and Éire Glaucoma Society in 2022-2023.
Gus’ recent work has been focused on improving the way randomised control trials (RCTs) are carried out in glaucoma research. He said: “Our resources to test and compare treatments adequately are already lagging behind the pace at which we generate new possibilities for therapy, which creates many risks for patients, and that gap will only widen. It is that gap which is my motivation.
“Without RCTs, which preserve the glorious power of randomization to give us robust answers, we fall prey to bias, selective reporting and ulterior motives.
“I hope that the impact of this work may have been (and will be) to encourage colleagues to look ever more critically at the information we receive, but more importantly to improve trial design within our speciality and ultimately to make it easier to answer those questions to which our patients need the answers.”
At last year’s UKEGS Conference in Edinburgh, Gus gave a talk on his research and how clinicians can use it to change their own practice. Tickets for the 2026 conference in Manchester will be released in April.
Anthony, meanwhile, has led major advances in understanding the genetic causes of glaucoma over the last year.
He has developed powerful polygenic risk scores to predict individual risk and is working to integrate these into clinical care for targeted screening and personalised treatment.
His work has also expanded global research resources by linking large-scale genetic and clinical datasets.
Anthony is a leading voice within Our Future Health, the UK’s largest ever health research programme, of which Glaucoma UK is an affiliate charity. It has the potential to convert knowledge about an individual’s genetic risk into cost-effective, targeted screening programmes, preventing late diagnosis of glaucoma.
Alongside this, he has driven national and international initiatives to improve data standards and imaging interoperability, helping enable more effective, connected eye care and accelerating research worldwide.