Dr. Chau-Minh Phan takes on a new role as assistant scientific director at the InnoHK Centre for Eye and Vision Research.
An experienced scientist-entrepreneur from the University of Waterloo has moved to Hong Kong to support the commercialization efforts of the InnoHK Centre for Eye and Vision Research (CEVR), a research collaboration between The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and the University of Waterloo.
Dr. Chau-Minh Phan was until recently a research assistant professor at the School of Optometry and Vision Science’s Centre for Ocular Research and Education (CORE). He is now assistant scientific director at CEVR, which is funded under the InnoHK initiative of the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. His appointment is for a five-year term.
“My role is to support the R&D scientific efforts of all the CEVR projects, connect them to key industry partners and help them hit their commercialisation milestones,” says Phan. “It will be challenging but exciting as well.”
Phan is no stranger to CEVR, having been a co-principal investigator there since 2020. He will work closely with Dr. Ben Thompson, CEVR’s CEO and scientific director, who is also director of the University of Waterloo School of Optometry and Vision Science.
“As an accomplished vision scientist and serial entrepreneur, Chau is a great addition to CEVR’s leadership team,” said Thompson. “I expect he will make significant contributions in getting technologies that prevent or treat vision loss to market.”
Phan will also work closely with Hong Kong-based leaders such as Dr. Allen Cheong, who was originally CEVR’s deputy director and will become COO and deputy scientific director on October 1. Cheong is also associate head at PolyU School of Optometry.
“We’re excited to have Dr. Phan here full time to advise our scientists on commercialization,” said Cheong. “It’s wonderful we were able to find someone with deep expertise both in vision science and entrepreneurship for this role. To have it be someone we already consider a colleague and friend is a bonus.”
Phan, who has a background in biochemistry, earned a PhD in vision science from the University of Waterloo School of Optometry and Vision Science in 2016. After working at two startups at Velocity, the University of Waterloo’s incubator, he returned to the School as a postdoctoral fellow in 2018, later becoming a research assistant professor.
At the same time, he pursued entrepreneurship, co-founding multiple startups. His most notable venture, OcuBlink Inc, has worked with several major contact lens companies. The startup develops advanced in vitro eye models for testing contact lenses and ophthalmic solutions, as well as models for optometric education.
OcuBlink developed out of Phan’s PhD research on drug delivery through contact lenses. At the time, no suitable model existed to test his early-stage research, so he built one that mimicked human tear flow. A further improvement added a blink.
Phan also co-founded Eyenova Biotech, a CEVR startup developing an “eye-on-a-chip device” for early-stage ophthalmic drug testing. Last year, the startup won a gold medal and a CAI award from the China Association of Inventions at the fourth Asia Exhibition of Innovations and Inventions in Hong Kong. Earlier this year, it also won a gold medal at the 2025 International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva.
Eyenova Biotech has completed several incubation programs in Hong Kong, is nearing completion of its first market-ready prototype, has secured its first pilot customer, and is preparing to raise a seed round next year.
What commercialization success looks like will vary by CEVR project. Some may become fully fledged spin-out companies. Others may choose to develop new patents and licence them to industry partners or to form partnerships with companies to co-develop new products.
“My goal is to understand the technologies being developed at CEVR, assess their maturity, and help bridge the gaps needed to achieve product–market fit,” says Phan. “We have many great technologies at CEVR. We just need the right partners or investors to take them to the next level.”