Know Your Chairman Scientific Committee
Dr Vardhaman Kankariya
Dr Vardhaman Kankariya is founder director of Asian Eye Hospital Pune, a tertiary care internationally reputed eye hospital. He is India’s first dual international fellowship trained cornea, cataract and refractive surgeon. He completed medical school from KEM Hospital (Mumbai) earning gold medal in ophthalmology and ophthalmology residency from prestigious Sankara Nethralaya in Chennai, where he was awarded Kanthimathinathan gold medal and K Vasanth Madhavan Endowment award as best outgoing resident. Dr Vardhaman initially completed cornea training under Professor Srinivas K Rao in chennai.
Further on, he became 1st and only Indian ophthalmologist to undergo structured 1-year fellowship in advanced refractive surgery in University of Crete, Greece under guidance of Professor Pallikaris (father of LASIK and Epi-LASIK). After that, Dr Vardhaman completed another 1 year Cornea and Refractive Surgery fellowship at world-renowned Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Miami (#1 eye hospital in USA) for advanced work on ‘femtosecond lasers’ in bladeless laser Cataract and refractive surgery under Prof Sonia Yoo.
He is one of the most experienced refractive surgeon globally for his age (35,000 procedures). He has delivered over 250 international and national faculty lectures. He won best paper awards at international meetings including APAO, ASCRS, ESCRS. He is the youngest recipient of prestigeous IIRSI national gold medal at Chennai. He was awarded – prestigious Dr V K Chitnis Oration Award – highest scientific award of Maharashtra Ophthalmological Society. He is recipient of Prof Yasuo Tano Grant from Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology and Grant from World Ophthalmological Society. He has been awarded Shiv Prasad Hardia refractive Surgery Award – highest scientific award for refractive surgeons from All India Ophthalmological Society and awarded Asia Pacific Academy Ophthalmology Refractive Award from APAO. Dr Vardhaman serves as section editor for ‘International Journal of Keratoconus and Ectatic Corneal Diseases’ and IJO. He is appointed scientific reviewer at 6 international journals. Dr Vardhaman has 50 publications in international peer reviewed journals and has contributed 7 textbooks chapters in LASIK textbooks.
He was bestowed with FAICO (Ref Surg) degree from All India Ophthalmic Society. He is first Indian ophthalmologist to perform Kamra and Flexivue corneal inlays. Dr Vardhaman is actively involved in training fellows in advanced cataract and refractive surgery and has trained over 20 fellows for the same. He is a visiting associate researcher at Institute of Vision and Optics, Greece. Dr Vardhaman served as Hon. Secretary MOS in 2020 and credited for revolutionizing functioning of MOS by many organisational changes which are considered to be milestone by MOS members including massive task of restructuring MOS membership database and starting group indemnity insurance for members. He was organizing secretary in MOSCON Goa and MOS VIRCON 2020 – first virtual Annual conference in India. He is Chairman, scientific committee of MOS 2022-24.