Werner Named Recipient of Verriest Medal

APS Fellow John S. Werner will receive the 2015 Verriest Medal at the biennial meeting of the International Colour Vision Society, July 3–7, 2015, in Sendai, Japan. Werner, Distinguished Professor of ophthalmology and vision science at the University of California, Davis, is receiving the medal for his outstanding contributions to the field of color vision.

As director of UC Davis’s Vision Science and Advanced Retinal Imaging Laboratory, Werner studies how aging and age-related diseases affect vision. He has made key contributions to the development of phase-variance optical coherence tomography, a noninvasive method for mapping the retina that promises to enhance scientists’ understanding of macular degeneration and other diseases of the retina and optic nerve.

Werner also has mapped the function of humans’ three different classes of color receptors and their relationships to the brain, as well as changes in these receptors over the lifespan. In separate work, he has determined that removing the lens of the eye during cataract surgery causes changes in the light reaching the eye and subsequent changes to color vision to which the brain slowly adjusts over time.