Dr Bao Nguyen is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne. She holds a Bachelor of Optometry (2008), PhD (2014) and Graduate Certificate in Adolescent Health and Wellbeing (2021) from The University of Melbourne. Her research expertise is in applied human visual neuroscience, spanning healthy development and ageing, neurodegeneration and neurological disorders. Dr Nguyen has led innovative research focusing on the eye and the brain nexus with $690K in fellowship and grant funding (14 awards since 2017, ~80% as sole or primary investigator), including a Melbourne Neuroscience Institute fellowship in 2017 and Melbourne Research Fellowship in 2020-21.

Dr Nguyen is a passionate advocate for optometry education for entry-to-practice students and for continuing professional development, previously serving on the Education Committee and as an Education Consultant for Optometry Australia, the peak national professional organisation for optometrists in Australia. She has undertaken Interprofessional Education Facilitator Training for optometry educators through the Centre for Advancement of Interprofessional Education in the UK (2020). She has advanced the scope of optometry by prompting rapid behaviour change (within 6 weeks of intervention) through educating optometrists regarding neurological screening in the primary eyecare setting (high Altmetrics attention score of 86th percentile compared to outputs of the same age). She is the first optometrist to be awarded the BioMedVic Early Career Clinician Researcher Award (2017).