Sara Picarazzi.
​
SOUTHAMPTON, U.K.—CooperVision announced it has awarded the Future Ocular Research Creativity Event (FORCE) Student of the Year award to Sara Picarazzi and Alessandra Rossi, students from the University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy.

Picarazzi and Rossi’s winning project, supervised by Silva Tavazzi, evaluated the absorption of eyeshadow in soft contact lenses. Cosmetic absorption was greater than expected and different types of contact lens material interacted differently with the cosmetic.

Two other teams reaching the final were also specially commended for their studies: Malgorzata Hadzicka from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, who presented on the influence of a contact lens on the measurement results by ultrasonography of the eye; as well as Marie Kodetová and Barbora Hráčková, students at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic who posed the question, soft contact lens wearers: are they doing everything the right way?

Judging the projects were researchers and clinicians Pascale Dauthuile president of the Association of Contact Lens Experts, France; Elena García Rubio of the National Institute of Optometry, Madrid, Spain; Eef van der Worp, PhD, from Maastricht University in the Netherlands; along with panel chairman Professor James Wolffsohn of the Aston University, U.K.

FORCE is an annual competition in the field of contact lenses in which students from all over Europe are invited to undertake a research project on a contact lens-related subject of their choice and to present their findings. Winners from each country go to the European final for a chance to become CooperVision FORCE Student of Year. The prize is a full delegate package, including travel and accommodation, to attend an international contact lens meeting.

This year’s FORCE final took place at CooperVision’s Centre of Innovation in Budapest, Hungary from May 19 to 20.