Farhad Hafezi
The Power List 2020 – Power List
Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland; Adjunct Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at the USC Roski Eye Institute, Los Angeles, USA; and Visiting Professor at the Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
Your three wishes?
Joining forces with other leaders to provide the best possible ophthalmic care and technology to all regions of the world, like we are doing with corneal cross-linking technology.
Finding the genetic causes for keratoconus. We currently treat the symptoms, but I would rather treat the underlying causes and eradicate keratoconus, once and for all.
I enjoy what I do every day, but one of my dreams is to travel through Australia on a BMW GS1250RS. After my medical studies, I traveled through Indonesia on a motorbike. It’s been many years now, but I would love to do this again if I could find the time.
Piece of advice for your younger self?
Don't worry about breaking conventions, and don't concern yourself too much with chasing titles and fame. Some of the best decisions I took in my life were completely the opposite of what was (at the time) conventional.
The most unexpected turn your career took?
I have had many, and again, it's all related to breaking convention. I left retina and decided to restart in cornea – after making a name for myself in retina! I left academia twice. Each and every time, everyone thought I was crazy, and these were hard decisions to make, but in retrospect, these were absolutely the right ones.
