Associate Professor
Cellular and Molecular Medicine
University of Ottawa Eye Institute
Ottawa, Canada
Dr. Coupland completed his PhD in experimental psychology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, in 1979. He was awarded the J.B.R. Cosgrove Research Fellowship at the Montreal Neurological Institute in the Department of Neuro-ophthalmology and with a cross-appointment in the Ophthalmology Department at McGill University. During that time, he was awarded a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.
In 1982, Dr. Coupland moved to Calgary where he held academic appointments in the Departments of Pediatrics, Clinical Neurosciences and Surgery at the University of Calgary. Dr. Coupland was director of Sensory Physiology Laboratory at Alberta Children's Hospital for the next 16 years. During that time, he established an active clinical service in auditory, visual and somatosensory evoked potential in assessing neonates and pediatric population in the Pediatric Neurology Department at Alberta Children's Hospital. He also established surgical intraoperative monitoring of patients in the operating room. At that time he had a funded clinical research program in auditory pathway development during the neonatal and perinatal period. He also had a research program in juvenile diabetic retinopathy.
In 1998, Dr. Coupland was appointed in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Ottawa and became the director of Structural and Functional Retinal Imaging Unit at the University of Ottawa Eye Institute. Dr. Coupland's clinical research interests include the investigation of structural and functional correlates in age related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy using multifocal electroretinography and optical coherence tomography imaging techniques. Recently, his research has extended into assessing the sensitivity and specificity of multifocal ERG and OCT in early detection of chloroquine/ hydroxychlorine retinal toxicity. Dr. Coupland's basic research laboratory investigates retinal function in animal models of retinal degeneration and in gene therapy treatment for retinal diseases. Dr. Coupland has had medical research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Foundation for Fighting Blindness (FFB), Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. Dr. Coupland has had numerous grants and contract support from pharmaceutical companies and biomedical instrument manufacturers. Dr. Coupland has developed the first North American ERG reading centre which has provided ERG reading for numerous US and international clinical trials.