Ross Ethier

Professor C Ross Ethier PhD received a B.Sc. (Eng.) in Mathematics & Engineering from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada in 1980, winning the Queen’s University Medal. He was then awarded an NSERC Science ’67 scholarship to complete a M.Math degree at the University of Waterloo, Canada, following which he completed S.M. and Ph.D. degrees at M.I.T. in 1983 and 1986, respectively. He was appointed an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1986, Full Professor in 1997 and Director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at U. of Toronto in July 2005, while holding a cross-appointment to Ophthalmology at U of Toronto. From 1 August 2007 to 31 July 2012 he was Professor of Biomechanics and Head of the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London. He was also the Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial. From 1 August 2012 he is the Lawrence L. Gellerstedt, Jr. Chair in Bioengineering and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University School of Medicine.

He was awarded a von Humboldt Fellowship as visiting professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremburg in 1999/2000. In 1997-99 he was an NSERC Steacie Fellow; at the time of this award, only four such awards were given per year across all areas of engineering, mathematics and science in Canada. Until leaving the U of Toronto, he held a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Computational Technology (www.chairs.gc.ca; 2001-2007). His work has resulted in 125 refereed journal publications. He serves on the editorial board of three publications (including the two leading basic science ophthalmology journals, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science and Experimental Eye Research), on the World Council of Biomechanics and on the National Glaucoma Research Scientific Review Committee of the American Health Assistance Foundation. He is co-author, with Craig A. Simmons, of a recent textbook on biomechanics. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering and the City and Guilds London Institute.

Professor Ethier’s field is biomechanics, with specific interests in the pathogenesis of glaucoma, in the mechanobiology of osteoarthritis and in atherogenesis. His work has been supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the National Institutes of Health, the Glaucoma Research Society, Physicians Service Incorporated, the Alcon Research Institute, Bausch and Lomb Corporation, The Wellcome Trust and EPSRC. In the area of glaucoma, his main research contributions have been in understanding the mechanisms of pressure regulation in the eye and in the biomechanics of the optic nerve head in glaucoma.