Researchers
Tim Fricke
(He/him)
Director of Research and EducationTim Fricke is an optometrist, researcher and international development practitioner. Before returning to the ACO in 2023, Tim has held clinical, teaching, research, management, and leadership roles in private, public, community health, hospital and refugee camp settings, including Director of the Brien Holden Foundation. He has extensive paediatric clinical experience, supervised post-graduate research in paediatric eye care and health economics, has taught undergraduate and post-graduate eye care courses, and provided continuing professional development across Australia as well as overseas. Tim has researched vision development, epidemiology, quality of life and access to eye care and he has also assisted the development of local systems & skills for providing primary and specialised eye care in a range of countries. He is an honorary senior fellow at the University of Melbourne and is completing a PhD in ophthalmic epidemiology at UNSW Sydney.
Show
Katerina Kiburg
(She/her)
Research Fellow, Eye Care ResearchKaterina holds the position of Research Fellow in Eye Care Research, a joint engagement between the NVRI and University of Melbourne. Katerina undertook a Master of Public Health, majoring in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and followed this up with a PhD in population level outcomes of advancements in diabetes care. She consolidated skills and expertise gained by way of further postgraduate training at the University of Melbourne. She has worked at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne and the Austin Hospital, major tertiary teaching hospitals in Melbourne. Katerina joined the Centre for Eye Research Australia and University of Melbourne as postdoctoral fellow in 2021.
Katerina’s work has been in establishing large datasets containing fundus images, visual field, and ocular coherence tomography, and then the use of artificial intelligence to predict disease outcomes such as stroke and heart attack.