Our Team

Prof Nathan Congdon

Prof Nathan Congdon, MD, MPH, is Ulverscroft Chair of Global Eye Health at Queen’s University Belfast and Director of Research and North Asia Advisor for Orbis International, helping also to shape the organization’s global strategic approach to diabetic eye disease and glaucoma. Prof Congdon is a Visiting Professor at Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center (ZOC) in Guangzhou, and was based there and elsewhere in China for nearly ten years until 2015.

He received an AB degree from Princeton University and an MPhil from Cambridge in the UK, both in Oriental studies, and is fluent in written and spoken Chinese. His medical and public health education were at Johns Hopkins University, where he pursued an ophthalmology residency at the Wilmer Eye Institute. Prof Congdon’s work has focused on the design and evaluation of high-quality, low-cost models of eye care delivery in areas of limited resources throughout the world, which frequently involves NGOs working together with academic institutions in Asia and the west. In addition to other recognitions, Prof Congdon has received the Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology’s highest prize for blindness prevention work in 2009 and a Chinese government Thousand Man Plan award in 2011. His research has been supported by the UK government MRC, EU, World Diabetes Foundation, USAID, WHO, World Bank, United States NIH, several NGOs and the governments of China and Hong Kong. He has over 215 peer-reviewed publications in journals including Lancet Global Health, BMJ and JAMA.

Dr Rohit C Khanna

Dr Rohit C Khanna is the Network Director for the Public Health Unit of LVPEI – The Gullapalli Pratibha Rao International Centre for Advancement of Rural Eye Care. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester, USA, and Conjoint Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia. An active participant in various working groups of the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Khanna is the IAPB Regional Chair for the South-East Asia region. His areas of clinical interest are cataract and glaucoma. An alumnus of the Government Medical College in Nagpur and an LVPEI fellow, he holds dual master’s degrees in Community Eye Health and Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health respectively.

Dr Khanna has led multiple studies, including the cohort of Andhra Pradesh Eye Disease Study (APEDS) – a milestone study. He has to his credit over 150 peer-reviewed publications, is on the editorial boards of several journals, and has been awarded several prestigious research grants for his work focusing on studying the outcomes of different interventions as well as on geriatric and child eye health. In collaboration with the University of New South Wales, Dr Khanna was involved in designing the Master’s Program in Community Eye Health and is also the course convenor of the Diploma and Master’s program led by LVPEI in Community Eye Health. A recipient of the IAPB Eye Health Leader Award and Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology’s Blindness Prevention Award, Dr Khanna has vast experience in leading capacity building initiatives, and working as consultant for both national and global organizations, including IAPB and WHO.

Prof Paul Glewwe

Prof Paul Glewwe, PhD, is Distinguished McKnight Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota. He specialises in Development Economics, the Economics of Education, and Programme Evaluation, focusing on the design and evaluation of policies to improve education and welfare in developing countries. Prof Glewwe’s work spans various countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with particular attention to understanding how long children remain in school and, more importantly, how much they learn.

Prof Glewwe holds a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Economics from Stanford University. His research explores household and individual behaviour, education, poverty, and child nutrition, and includes extensive work on inequality, income mobility, and educational outcomes in both developing countries and the United States. He has conducted research in numerous countries, including Brazil, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, India, Kenya, Morocco, Peru, Rwanda, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Prof Glewwe has been recognised with multiple prestigious awards, including Second Place in the 1st National Award for Studies on the Bolsa Familia Programme in Brazil (2008), the University of Minnesota Award for Global Engagement (2012), and the Distinguished McKnight University Professorship (2013). In 2015, he received the Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education Award from the University of Minnesota, honouring his dedication to graduate education.

Prof Glewwe’s published research includes influential studies such as Why Programmes Fail: Lessons for Improving Public Service Quality from a Mixed-Methods Evaluation of an Unsuccessful Teacher Training Programme in Nepal and Can Teaching Be Taught? Improving Teachers’ Pedagogical Skills at Scale in Rural Peru. His work continues to have a global impact on the fields of education and development economics.