Engineering degree gives alum the vision to help others

When he graduated from Lehigh in 1963, little in Tom Brunner's academic record suggested he would one day play a major role in curtailing the curse of blindness.

Brunner earned a B.S. in electrical engineering, not biology or chemistry, and although he learned to think logically and to appreciate technology, he was not a stellar student.

"I was not by any stretch of the imagination a top student," says Brunner. "My GPA was a little over 3.0."

"But I always believed I got a good education from Lehigh, both in engineering and the liberal arts. And the electrical engineering program kept me especially busy in math and physics."

Less than a decade after leaving Lehigh, Brunner joined Coherent Medical Inc., a small laser company in California, as a sales engineer. In 1970, he was the project manager and salesman for the first commercially successful argon laser photocoagulator. The laser revolutionized retinal surgery and found widespread use as a treatment for diabetic retinopathy.

"Laser photocoagulation was a major factor reducing blindness among diabetics," says Brunner. "Before the technique became available, the incidence of blindness among diabetics with diabetic retinopathy was 50 percent. Today, it's less than 2 percent."

Earlier this year, after a 30-year career in the ophthalmic laser business, Brunner was appointed president and CEO of the Glaucoma Research Foundation. The non-profit organization seeks to save the eyesight of people with glaucoma through education and research and hopes eventually to find a cure for the illness, which is the number-one cause of blindness in America.

After graduating from Lehigh, Brunner joined DuPont Inc. He went to work in the applied physics lab at the company's experimental station in Wilmington, Del., where he did research on lasers and their industrial applications.

In 1969, Brunner earned an M.B.A. from the University of Delaware. Shortly afterwards, he joined Coherent in California.

"At this time, laser photocoagulation had been invented at Stanford," says Brunner. "We took the lab version of this technique and developed a bench model into a product that could be manufactured, sold and serviced around the world. We made someone else's invention into a reliable product."

Brunner spent most of the next 30 years with Coherent Medical (now Lumenis Inc.), an international producer of medical and aesthetic lasers and light-based technology, where he became executive vice president.

He also served three years as president of Laserscope, a start-up company that produced medical lasers.

Recently, he helped develop selective laser trabeculoplasty, a new, minimally invasive laser therapy for glaucoma.

"I've worked in project engineering, marketing, sales management and general management," he says. "My main focus has been in ophthalmic lasers, which are used to correct vision problems, and to treat macular degeneration, glaucoma and other eye diseases."

"I've worked with doctors and scientists to develop new products and bring them to market. It has been a wonderful career. I feel very fortunate to be able to help people."

Having an engineering education has been critical to his success, Brunner says.

"I have always felt that people [working in technology] without a basic engineering background are at a disadvantage," he says. "Being able to communicate with engineers and researchers in their language can help you determine what questions you need to ask. It makes for a better result."

In his new position with the 25-year-old Glaucoma Research Foundation, Brunner will seek to educate people about a disease that strikes quietly, often causing irreversible damage to the optic nerve before it is detected.

"Three million Americans have glaucoma," says Brunner, "but only half of those people know they have it. There's no warning sign for glaucoma - too often, you don't realize anything is wrong until you have lost part of your vision. By then, it's too late to get it back."

Brunner is particularly interested in reaching people who are at risk for glaucoma, including the elderly and African-Americans, as well as people with previous eye injuries, people with a family history of glaucoma, and people who use steroids. It is important, he says, that those at risk have regular eye checkups to detect glaucoma early, when treatment can prevent vision loss.

"My mission as CEO is to preserve the eyesight of glaucoma patients through research and education, and to raise money in order to support the research that will help us better understand this disease and hopefully help us figure out how to cure it."

by Kurt Pfitzer
kap4@lehigh.edu