Vassilis Fotinakis, MSc

Mr Vassilis Fotinakis was born in Athens, Greece, on the 9^th of May, 1968. He graduated with a first degree (equivalent to B.Sc) from the Department of Optics and Optometry at the Technological and Educational Institute (T.E.I.) of Athens on 1990 and on 1993 he received an M.Sc research degree in Optometry from UMIST (University of Manchester, Institute for Science and Technology) in the UK, after two years of research in the low vision and eye movements field. After doing his compulsory military service, he was employed as a contact lens practitioner in a leading chain of ophthalmic optics practices in Greece (Optical S.A.) where he remains as director of the Contact Lens Department in the central Athens branch, being involved mainly in specialist contact lens fitting (keratoconus, post-surgery, cosmetic, multifocals, etc), He has also acted as a part time consultant for companies distributing contact lenses and low vision products in Greece. His fields of interest still remain contact lenses, low vision and refraction and since 1995 he has also been recruited by the T.E.I. of Athens, Department of Optics and Optometry as a part time lecturer where nowadays he lectures on low vision, ophthalmic lenses technology, clinical refraction and contact lenses. He has written one book on Low Vision which is the official textbook in the Optics and Optometry Department, co-written two books, one on Clinical Refraction and one on Contact Lenses, both, also, being selected among the recommended textbooks for the T.E.I. of Athens.

He also has publications on Low Vision and Reading in scientific peer reviewed journals. He is a long time member of the British Contact Lens Association (B.C.L.A.). and has also served as a supervisor of IACLE examinations in Athens, Greece. He has participated as a guest speaker in all National Optometric Conferences in Greece since 1995 and has served as a member of staff in a number of postgraduate seminars on Clinical Refraction and Contact Lenses that the Department of Optics and Optometry has arranged during the last fifteen years. Since 2010 he serves as a visiting education faculty member at the Johnson& Johnson Vision Care Institute in Prague.

He enjoys very much soccer (Panathinaikos and Liverpool fan) and tennis, plays fanatically an Ibanez electric guitar and loves movies and playing with animals (especially swimming with dolphins….).