Scientific & Medical Advisory Committee
Alex Hewitt is the Professor of Ophthalmology at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania. He obtained his PhD investigating the molecular and phenotypic associations for glaucoma in 2009 and completed formal Ophthalmology training at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne in 2011. The following year, with Prof Alice Pébay, he commenced the large-scale banking of cell lines from patients with and without a variety of inherited eye diseases and together they established a laboratory for automated processing of induced pluripotent stem cells. In 2014, Alex expanded his laboratory to Hobart, where his team have been applying CRISPR/Cas-gene editing technology to better understand and treat inherited eye diseases. He led the first report of viral mediated CRISPR/Cas editing in the retina, and was involved with the first single cell RNA-seq atlas of the human retina. Alex has been involved with work relating to the identification of genes and risk variants associated with primary open-angle glaucoma and myopia, as well as ocular quantitative traits. To date Alex is a co-author on over 400 peer-reviewed publications, which have been cited more than 27,000 times and he has a H-index of 85. He is currently supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Leadership Fellowship, and is passionate about ensuring people with inherited retinal disease have appropriate access to emerging therapies.
