Top Moorfields doctor awarded knighthood in Queen's Birthday Honours

Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is delighted that Professor Peng Tee Khaw, our director of research and development and one of our leading eye doctors and researchers, has been awarded a knighthood for services to ophthalmology in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Professor Khaw, who specialises in glaucoma surgery both for paediatric and complex adult cases, joined Moorfields and our research partners at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology in 1987.  He was appointed as a consultant in 1993 and as a professor in 1998. His distinguished career spans the fields of medicine and clinical research and is reflected in the breadth of clinical, academic and director roles he holds.

In addition to his role at Moorfields and the Institute, Professor Khaw is the director of the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre based at Moorfields and the Institute, and director of the eyes and vision theme of UCL Partners, one of the UK’s first accredited academic health science centres and now one of its first academic health science networks. Until May 2013, he was also president of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), the world’s largest eye and vision research organisation, the first UK-based president in the association’s 85-year history.

Commenting on his award Professor Khaw said:“I am very humbled to have been awarded this incredible honour. I feel I have received this on behalf of all my colleagues here at Moorfields, UCL and around the world with whom I have been privileged to work, and who transform the lives of so many people every day.”

Moorfields’ chief executive John Pelly added: “The award of a knighthood to Professor Khaw is thoroughly well deserved. He is, without doubt, one of the foremost ophthalmologists and clinical scientists of his generation and is enormously respected by colleagues and patients alike.  I am thrilled that he has been recognised in this way, and warmly congratulate him on behalf of everyone at Moorfields.”  

Professor Khaw’s long track record of innovative research includes developing new therapies, particularly for scarring following glaucoma surgery. He has developed surgical techniques which have markedly improved the safety and outcome of glaucoma surgery, and developed new anti-scarring treatments based on laboratory research leading to large international clinical trials and use.

These treatments and techniques have been successfully adapted for use in many parts of the developing world at minimal cost. He and his team have been awarded over 20 national and international prizes.

Professor Khaw trained in both general medicine and ophthalmology at Southampton University. After completing his surgical training, he did a PhD in cell and molecular biology of ocular wound healing at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and University of Florida, USA. He treats complex adult patients and children with glaucoma, receiving patients from all over the United Kingdom, Europe and other parts of the world. In 2012, he was named as one of Britain’s best children’s doctors in The Times Top Children’s Doctors list.  He has given more than 20 named lectures and has published over 350 academic papers, chapters and books, as well as raising more than £80 million for research programmes and new clinical facilities.

Was this information useful? Please rate the page.