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Dear Friend and Colleague,
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Once again, I am very pleased to invite you to the 17th Annual Meeting of the Foster Ocular Immunology Society (FOIS), which will be held on the evening of Sunday, May 6, 2012, at the Marriott Harbor Beach Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in conjunction with the 2012 ARVO Meeting. The meeting will again be supported, as it has been during the past decade, by an unrestricted educational grant from Bausch & Lomb, Inc., and we are very grateful for their continuous recognition of the importance of our Meeting.
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Seventeen years ago, Dr. Ron Neumann, one of the uveitis specialists in Israel, recognized the need of bringing ophthalmologists who are involved in the care of patients with uveitis and ocular inflammatory disorders together once a year at ARVO to discuss the management of complex clinical cases in a less formal setting often present in meetings of other societies or associations. Thus, the precursor of FOIS was born. During the past decades, the Society has grown tremendously, with the formal establishment of FOIS in 2003. The Foster Ocular Immunology Society, named in honor of Dr. C. Stephen Foster for his contribution to the field of ocular immunology and uveitis, is a charitable organization dedicated to the furtherance of knowledge, through research, clinical study, and education, of ocular inflammation and immunology. Memberships to FOIS are limited to individuals who have completed fellowship in ocular immunology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Eye Research and Surgery Institution as well as to distinguished clinician scientists who are invited to join. Friends and colleagues are invited to attend the FOIS annual meetings.
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At the 2012 FOIS ARVO Meeting, we will also welcome the new members of the FOIS Executive Committee: David Chu (New Jersey), President; Esen Akpek (Maryland), Vice President; Joseph Tauber (Missouri), Treasurer; Virender Sangwan (India), Secretary; Yasir Sepah (Maryland), Member-in-Training. Sofia Androudi (Greece) will continue to serve as the webmaster of our FOIS website. Past FOIS presidents, Neal Barney (Wisconsin) and Sarkis Soukasian (Massachusetts), along with Mr. Scott Evans (Massachusetts), will continue to help with the conducts of our FOIS.
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The meeting format for the 17th FOIS Meeting will be similar to the last sixteen annual meetings: there will be a social gathering with a Dinner Buffet starting at 7:00 PM, and the Scientific Meeting with case presentations will begin at 8:15 PM.
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The theme for this year meeting will be: Ocular Manifestations of Systemic Inflammatory Diseases. Our Guest of Honor and Invited Speaker will be Professor Peter McCluskey of the University of Sydney School of Medicine, Australia. Dr. McCluskey, the Director of Save Sight Institute at Sydney Medical School, is an internationally known authority on ocular inflammatory diseases and uveitis. As in previous meetings, besides our distinguished speaker, we will discuss challenging cases presented by many of you. The presence of Dr. McCluskey at our meeting will certainly ensure a lively and informative discussion!
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I look forward to your sharing with us your most unique ocular inflammatory cases with systemic disease associations. . However, we also welcome any other uveitic or inflammatory challenging cases from your own practice or institution. Please prepare an abstract (200 words or less) and send it to me by March 26, 2012. As we are on a tight time schedule, I may not be able to accept any abstract sent after March 26. Please send your abstract to me as an attached file to my e-mail address, qnguyen4@jhmi.edu and copy to Yasir J. Sepah, MBBS, email: ysepah2@jhmi.edu. Abstracts will not be accepted by mail or fax. Please
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prepare your abstract using Microsoft Word. All abstracts should contain a title, and names, degrees, and affiliations of all authors, and the four headlines: purpose, method, result, and conclusion. We are most interested in challenging cases being presented; presentations in the form of lecture are strongly discouraged.
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I will confirm upon receipt of your abstract, and if it is selected, will give you specific timing for your presentation. Each presentation will be allowed 6 minutes, followed by 4 minutes for discussion. Timing will be strictly imposed and enforced in order to avoid an excessively long evening! Each participant will be allowed to give only one presentation.
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If you do not plan to submit an abstract but plan to attend the meeting, please send or fax back the Reservation Form to me no later than March 31, 2012.
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Quan Dong Nguyen, M.D., M.Sc. Wilmer Eye Institute Johns Hopkins Hospital 600 North Wolfe Street, Maumenee 745 Baltimore, Maryland 21287, USA Fax: 1 (410) 502-1712 E-mail: qnguyen4@jhmi.edu
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If you have not paid your FOIS membership for 2012, please do so immediately, as your dues will help to support our meetings as well as the missions of our Society. Membership dues are required for FOIS members to attend our annual meetings at ARVO and AAO congresses. You can paid on-line at
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www.fosterocularimmunologysociety.org
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Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any question about the 17th Annual FOIS Meeting. I look forward to seeing you in Fort Lauderdale at the 2012 ARVO Meeting. It will be our last ARVO FOIS Meeting in Fort Lauderdale for a while; thus, I hope to be able to see many of you this May!
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Quan Dong Nguyen, M.D., M.Sc. Executive Secretary Foster Ocular Immunology Society
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| Pay your Annual Dues now !!! |
Pay your Annual Dues now, fast and easy. You can use all major credit cards or a Paypal account. You will receive an e-mail confirmation, shortly after the transaction approves
Dues are
100$ for members who are 5 or more years from fellowship
50$ for fellows who completed their fellowships (less than 5 years) or still in training
PLEASE REMEMBER TO WRITE A MESSAGE WHEN PAYING 100$ for annual fees, more or less money as a donation to the FOIS
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