An Associate Lecturer and PhD student in the School of Optometry and Vision Science has won the inaugural UNSW Speed Thesis Competition 2009.

The competition gave research student's the chance to demonstrate their outstanding communication skills by explaining what their research is about, and why it is important (and interesting!), to a non-expert audience in under 3 minutes. First prize was $3,000.

David Mann won the competition on 9 October 2009 with his presentation based on his PhD thesis, entitled 'Vision for Interceptive Actions in Sport'.

David summed up his thesis: 'It is commonly assumed that highly skilled sportspeople who excel in fast ball sports (such as tennis, hockey and cricket) must possess exceptionally good vision. Yet there is little evidence to suggest this to be the case, and there exists numerous instances of highly successful athletes considered to have patently poor vision. This thesis examines the effect of visual blur on an interceptive hitting task, using contact lenses to blur the vision of skilled cricket batters. Remarkably, the results reveal that blurring to the point of legal-blindness is required before there is a significant decrease in batting performance. The outcomes of this thesis have lead to important insights to the visual-motor systems used in interceptive hitting tasks, and has directly resulted in the adoption of an innovate training tool (using visual blur) to improve the batting performance of the Australian National and State cricket teams.'

David graduated with a BOptom from UNSW in 2000 with Honours Class 1 and the University Medal. He also obtained a BSc (Health and Sports Science) from UNSW in 2004 with Honours Class 1 and the University Medal.

David was appointed as an Associate Lecturer in the School in 2002. In July 2009 he was awarded a 12 month Postdoctoral appointment with the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, while retaining a fractional appointment with the School.

The School is very proud of David and his achievements.