Scientific Advisory Committee Meeting – Pediatric Ophthalmology Grant Review 2020

Annually the Knights Templar Eye Foundation holds a meeting mid-March with the officers and trustees of the Foundation which all come together in Dallas with ten doctors specializing in pediatric ophthalmology from many leading hospitals and research institutions throughout the country to review the applications and recommend which applications based on the merits of the proposal should be funded with a grant.

But because of the evolving COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic this annual meeting took place but it was not a physical meeting this year with everyone flying in from around the country but it was held through a teleconference with all doctors and officers of the Foundation.

The meeting started at 8:00am CST and concluded at 4:00pm CST – our conference allowed everybody to view our shared PC screen so they could track the scoring of grants as they were recorded after each grant was discussed in detail.

Our meeting ended with 27 total Competitive Renewal & Career Starter grants for a total of $1,874,463 that was recommended by the SAC doctors, later that night these were approved by the KTEF SAC committee.

Check Presentations / Website update

Because of the pandemic we will not be making personal presentations of checks this year, but instead will be mailing the checks directly to the grant recipients. Our website https://www.ktef.org/grants has a complete list of the grants that were approved along with the specific research.