On February 2, 2025, ICO held its annual Mullen-Ernest Symposium co-organized by the University of Chicago department of ophthalmology. This is always a wonderful opportunity for optometrists to take a deeper dive into the challenging and fascinating cases that we treat at the IEI. With a co-chair both from ICO (Jennifer Harthan, OD ’06) and University of Chicago (Asim Farooq, MD), we covered a large range of subjects relevant to both optometrists and ophthalmologists.

This year our doctors focused on the cornea and external disease. This included herpetic eye disease, allergic eye disease, dry eye, and complex contact lenses. During lunch there was also a discussion on retinal eye disease. Thank you to our colleagues at University of Chicago: Asim Farooq, MD; Daniella Schochet, MD; James Reidy, MD; and Steven Quan, OD ’16 as well as to our ICO faculty and lecturers: Jennifer Harthan, OD ’06; William Skoog, OD ’21; Diana Masolak, OD ’24; and Raman Bhakhri, OD for presenting.