Dr Frank Eperjesi, BSc PhD FCOptom DOrth PGCertHE Senior Fellow HEA MBA MEd FInstLM │ Professor of Clinical Optometry | Registered Optometrist

Frank’s first career was as a geologist. After gaining a degree in Geological Sciences from the University of Birmingham, UK he joined a small family company specialising in drilling shallow boreholes to check that the integrity of the ground would allow the construction of substantial buildings. He worked in London on ground that was later used for the Dome, Canary Wharf and London City Airport.

His next position was in an oil exploration service company, based in Aberdeen, and he worked mainly in the Norwegian, UK and German sectors of the North Sea with occasional trips to off-shore exploration installations near the Balearic Islands and Pontefract, Yorkshire. He then decided to change his career and gained a degree in optometry from Aston University.

He spent much of his vacation time looking for oil in the North Sea in order to pay for his tuition fees. He graduated in 1990 when there was a recession in UK optometry but nevertheless was the first in his class to secure a training position in a junior post at the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital. Here he learned the crafts of paediatric refraction and complex contact lens fitting and specialised in low vision rehabilitation.

After 5 years he left the eye hospital and worked in a mix of clinical settings and countries, including many leading optometry schools. He provided holiday and busy period cover for all the large UK corporate eye care businesses, supervised optometry undergraduates at Aston University School of Optometry in binocular vision and general eye examination clinics and developed the curriculum for a further investigation pre-clinical module.

He also worked with orthoptists for the Institute of Child Welfare, Birmingham, at the Institute of Optometry, London and in independent practices in Newport, Shropshire and Hereford. Somehow, he found the time to provide eye care at camps in Ghana and Vietnam and to complete a PhD in 2000 on the topic of reading rehabilitation in low vision.

He then became a lecturer at Aston University School of Optometry with responsibility for the binocular vision module and clinics as well as further investigative technique module. He was Deputy Head of Optometry from 2005, Head of Optometry from 2010 to 2017, gaining an MBA in 2009 and a Masters in Education (MEd) in 2017. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012. In 2017, he spent six months as Interim Deputy Head of Aston Business School before joining the Centre for Learning and Innovation in Professional Practice as Dean and Professor in Learning Innovation.

He was lead tutor for the MEd programme and chair of the Operational Learning and Teaching Committee and a chair of the Disciplinary Committee. He contributed to the further development of the University’s Learning and Teaching Committee, to the Learning Space Strategy conceived and organised the inaugural Aston University Learning and Teaching Conference and a University based learning and teaching journal.

He has been an examiner for the College of Optometrists’ national optometry exams in binocular vision and has contributed to optometry curricula development at Masters and undergraduate levels in Amman, Jordan, Nablus, Palestine and Valladolid, Spain along with quality assuring optometry programmes at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland, Dania Academy, Denmark, City of London University and Ngee Ann University, Singapore.

He has presented at conferences hosted by leading optometry schools including the American Academy of Optometry, British Contact Lens Association, the College of Optometrists, European Academy of Optometry, the Tanzanian Optometric Association, the Portuguese Optometric Association and the Association of French Optometrists.

His research interests include verifying the reliability of optometric instruments, the link between food and long term eye health and hallucinations caused by vision loss; areas in which he has published many peer reviewed articles. He has authored and co-authored five books on optometry training, nutrition, clinical practice and binocular vision and is working on another four.

He has been an expert witness since 2005 providing around 200 reports for fitness to practise hearings by the UK regulator, civil cases and a criminal case.

He is a governor at a school in Sutton Coldfield and is shaping his local community by cultivating a fledgling career in local government.