Professor Bertil Damato received his undergraduate education in Malta, where he was born, and his postgraduate training in ophthalmology and ocular oncology under the mentorship of Professor W. Foulds at the Tennent Institute of Ophthalmology in Glasgow. In 1993, he established the Liverpool Ocular Oncology Centre, which he directed for 20 years. From 2013 to 2018, he was professor of ophthalmology and radiation oncology and director of the ocular oncology service at the University of California, San Francisco. Currently, he is a senior clinical research fellow at the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, department of clinical neurosciences, University of Oxford, and consultant ocular oncologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London. Professor Damato has served as president of the European Ocular Oncology Group, the European Vision and Research Association and the International Society of Ocular Oncology. He has published more than 300 scientific articles and authored or co-edited several textbooks. Professor Damato has received a number of awards, which include the Bjerrum Medal in Denmark, the Cohen Medal in South Africa, the Watson and Ashton Medals in the UK, the Shields Medal in Hong Kong and the Platinum Award of the National Health Service of the UK.