Experience
Twenty years across clinic, lab, lecture theatre and product.
From retinal diagnostics in a tertiary eye institute in Hyderabad, through an ARC industry fellowship and practice ownership, to building AI products full time. Every role below is drawn from my résumé — nothing rounded up.
Employment history
Founder
Saryu & OptoGuide · Brisbane, Australia
Designing and building AI products that help people move from an idea to a concrete next step — one for general creators, one for optometrists.
- Saryu: turns plain-language goals into ordered plans, tool choices and prompts
- OptoGuide™: clinical decision support for assessment, therapeutics and referral
- Full ownership of product strategy, design, engineering and go-to-market
Optometrist (Locum)
Multiple practices · Brisbane, Australia
Comprehensive eye examinations and therapeutic management across a range of practice settings and patient populations.
- Eye health examinations, refraction and prescribing of optical devices
- Co-management and referral relationships with ophthalmologists and GPs
- Rapid adaptation to different practice systems, teams and equipment
Senior Lecturer
Queensland University of Technology · Brisbane, Australia
Teaching into the optometry programme, connecting contemporary clinical practice with the underlying vision science.
- Course delivery across clinical and visual-optics content
- Translating current practice standards into teaching material
Optometry Director & Shareholder
Specsavers Lutwyche · Queensland, Australia
Joint owner and clinical lead of a full-service optometry practice, responsible for the clinical team, the patient experience and commercial performance.
- Led a team of optical dispensers and optometrists
- Managed day-to-day store operations and business development
- Managed ocular pathology and prescribed ophthalmic medication
- Owned complaint resolution and referral relationships with ophthalmology and general practice
Optometrist (Full-time)
Sutco Optometry — Specsavers, Nambour & Kawana · Queensland, Australia
Seven years of high-volume primary-care optometry with therapeutic management across a broad regional patient base.
- Eye health examinations, refraction and dispensing recommendations
- Management of ocular pathology and prescribing of ophthalmic medication
- Referral and co-management with ophthalmologists and general practitioners
Research Officer (part-time)
School of Optometry, QUT — in collaboration with Carl Zeiss Vision · Brisbane, Australia
Continued the industry-linked spectacle lens performance programme, focused on modelling, analysis and publication.
- Optical system modelling in Zemax; image analysis in MATLAB and ImageJ
- Programming in MATLAB and C#
- Experimental design and grant preparation
- Reporting to Carl Zeiss Vision and preparing peer-reviewed manuscripts
Optometrist
Costco Wholesale, North Lakes · Queensland, Australia
Clinical optometry alongside responsibility for the optical department's staff, stock and commercial targets.
- Managed optical department staff, rostering and leave
- Owned department sales targets and stock currency
- Full-scope eye examinations and prescribing
Optometrist (Locum, contractual)
Big W Vision, Woolworths Limited · Australia
Contract clinical optometry across multiple sites.
- Eye health examinations and prescribing of optical devices
- Referral relationships with ophthalmologists and general practitioners
Optometrist (Locum, contractual)
Specsavers Optometrists · Bupa Optical · Australia
Concurrent locum contracts covering primary-care optometry across two national networks.
- Full-scope eye examinations and optical prescribing
- Maintained clinical standards across unfamiliar practice systems
Research Fellow
School of Optometry, QUT — in collaboration with Carl Zeiss Vision · Brisbane, Australia
Ran the experimental arm of the vision-performance and spectacle-lens-design programme, from recruitment through to publication.
- Participant recruitment and protocol execution
- Built optical systems for measuring ocular parameters
- Statistical analysis, interpretation and scholarly writing
- Co-supervised a PhD student, mentored two others, and supervised undergraduate project groups
Australian Post-Doctoral Fellow (Industry)
School of Optometry, QUT — ARC Linkage grant with Carl Zeiss Vision · Brisbane, Australia
A three-year ARC industry fellowship investigating how peripheral optics and aberration structure affect real visual performance, and what that means for lens design.
- Designed experiments and contributed to the successful ARC Linkage application
- Optical modelling in Zemax; analysis in MATLAB and ImageJ
- Monthly reporting and milestone presentations to the industry partner
- Produced the majority of the peer-reviewed output listed under Publications
Senior Research Optometrist (part-time)
LANDMARK study — Longitudinal Assessment of Novel Ophthalmic Diabetic Markers, IHBI / QUT · Brisbane, Australia
Clinical lead for the optometric workup of diabetic and control participants in a longitudinal diabetic-marker study.
- OCT, visual fields, frequency doubling perimetry and fundus photography
- Non-contact corneal aesthesiometry and corneal nerve imaging
- Referral correspondence to participants' physicians and ophthalmologists
Optical Dispenser (part-time)
Specsavers — Garden City & Carindale · Queensland, Australia
Front-of-house dispensing while completing post-doctoral research — a deliberate grounding in the commercial reality of Australian optical practice.
- Frame and lens selection, pupillary measurements and order management
- Patient education on lens designs, coatings, tints and contact lens care
Research Assistant → Senior Research Assistant
Ophthalmic and Visual Optics Laboratory, IHBI / QUT · Brisbane, Australia
Extended the PhD dataset into new work isolating corneal and internal contributions to peripheral aberration.
- Zemax re-analysis separating corneal and internal aberration components
- MATLAB programming and Zemax scripting
- Manuscript preparation and grant applications
Optometrist — Retina Department
L.V. Prasad Eye Institute · Hyderabad, India
Retinal diagnostics in a high-volume tertiary eye institute, including work on two multi-centre clinical trials.
- OCT, fundus fluorescein angiography, fundus photography, electrophysiology and ocular ultrasonography
- Optometrist and stereo fundus photographer on the Eli Lilly / EMMES multi-centre MBDL diabetic macular oedema study
- Optometrist on the Radial Optic Neurotomy for Central Vein Occlusion (ROVO) study
Qualifications
Clinical depth, technical range.
Doctoral thesis
“Peripheral ocular monochromatic aberrations”
The PhD produced 8 peer-reviewed journal articles and 7 conference presentations.
Completed 2 October 2009 · Supervisors Prof. David A. Atchison and Dr Andrew Carkeet
Optical imperfections called aberrations affect image quality of the eye away from the line of sight as well as along it. In the first systematic investigation of peripheral aberrations, these were measured across a 42° × 32° region of the central visual field in different subject groups. The magnitude and pattern across the visual field are altered by accommodation, myopia, ageing, and the refractive interventions of orthokeratology, laser surgery and intraocular lens implantation. Coma and spherical aberration were the most altered higher-order aberrations — coma particularly by myopia and ageing, spherical aberration particularly by ageing, accommodation and intraocular lens implantation.
Registration & membership
Current and past professional standing
AHPRA registration number available on request.