For most academics, it’s a long road before they get to lead a major institute. In a chronological sense, not for Dr. Alex Müntz. The University of Waterloo School of Optometry and Vision Science alum was only 37, six years out from his PhD, when he became a professor and head of the Institute of Optometry at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) in 2023.
In a geographic sense, though, Müntz has travelled a long way since he was born in the mountains of Romania. His road took him to Germany, Canada and New Zealand before Switzerland – a 20-year journey. Figuratively, he has perhaps come even further.
Fluent in Romanian and German since childhood, Müntz spent his youth running around outside, skiing and playing music. Classically trained as a choirboy and acoustic guitarist, music became his focus once he picked up the electric guitar in his teens.
His parents, however, weren’t keen for their son to become a musician. They worked in the optical industry and suggested optometry as a good course of study. When his dad had to go to Germany on a business trip, he invited his son to come along to look at the optometry school at Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena (University of Applied Sciences Jena).
“I was fascinated by the prospect of living alone in a foreign country, so I gave it a shot, and it was… okay,” says Müntz. “Honestly, clinical work was all right but not my jam. My grades were awful.”
Towards the end of his undergraduate studies, though, Müntz’s contact lens professor, Prof. Wolfgang Sickenberger, became his mentor, introducing him to the world of research. Working with him at a small institute involved in clinical research sparked his interest.
“I was hooked,” says Müntz.
In 2010, as a vision science master’s student, Müntz attended his first major conference, the British Contact Lens Association meeting. He was wandering around with his colleague and friend, Hendrik Walther, when their supervisor waved them over and introduced them to Dr. Lyndon Jones, director of the Centre for Ocular Research & Education (CORE) at the University of Waterloo.
“Wolfgang said, ‘You should have them over for a research project,’” remembers Müntz. “Lyndon took a look at us and said, ‘Okay, fine.’ A little while later, we got an invitation to go over for six months.”
When Müntz and Walther arrived in Waterloo, they quickly realized their lab skills weren’t up to par for what was expected of them. They learned fast, though – they had no choice.
“In our last couple of months, Lyndon said, ‘See you back here for your PhD,’” remembers Müntz. “We said, ‘Thanks, but we’re going back to Europe to work for industry.’ After I defended, I started looking for jobs and had a couple of offers but nothing struck me as the right thing to do. So I spoke to Hendrik and said, ‘Should we try this PhD thing?’ The seed planted in Waterloo had sprouted – I’d come to see research and education as the engines for progress in our field. That belief brought me back to Waterloo and still keeps me on track today.”
In 2011, the friends arrived again in Waterloo, where Müntz regularly did sound for and sometimes played with the School’s band, the Lost Faculties. Research-wise, though, things initially didn’t go well. Müntz wanted to use quantum dots to measure tear hydrodynamics in vivo. The idea was to instil the nanoparticles, which are fluorescent under the right lighting, to track the movement of the tear film around contact lenses.
There were two problems. First, quantum dots proved nearly impossible to obtain. When he finally got some – some borderline skulduggery was involved – the ethics committee raised other concerns. The evidence about the safety of quantum dots was mixed even in animal models and only a few researchers had used them in human eyes – their own. After two years of work, Müntz was told he had to change his topic.
In 2017, Müntz successfully defended “Cellular changes at the lid margin,” supervised by Jones and Dr. Lakshman Subbaraman. After that, he and his wife planned to spend some time travelling before returning to Europe for good. Then, on a Colombian mountaintop, he got an email from an acquaintance offering him a postdoctoral fellowship in New Zealand. Within a couple of weeks, they were in Auckland.
At the University of Auckland, Müntz moved from contact lens to dry eye research. One project focused on what heavy screen use does to blinking in young people. When people are aware their blinking is being studied, though, they change their patterns. So Müntz and his colleagues went to a gaming convention. They used iPads to survey teens on their screen use – while unbeknownst to them, the tablets were tracking how often they blinked.
The researchers found heavy screen use is indeed correlated with reduced blinking in young people – and reduced blinking is correlated with dry eye.
Partly as a result of this research, as well as more work Müntz was involved in that assessed mountains of literature to create guidelines on screen use, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, which had previously placed strong emphasis on digital learning, recently endorsed the guidelines on safe use of screens at different educational stages.
Müntz started his current job in September 2023 and is glad to be closer to family again, especially now that he and his wife have a five-year-old son. It’s an intense role, he says, but he’s had plenty of support from a university that believes in developing talent and giving fresh voices a chance.
Müntz’s recipe for success?
“Stand on the shoulders of international giants. Grow your network and your network will grow you,” he says. “It takes more than excellence to raise an academic; it takes a village. Your connection with that village is your unique value proposition – and when the right challenge arises, you might just be the right person at the right time. Then go for it.”
Müntz does miss Waterloo – especially the people at CORE, including his longtime buddy, Walther, who’s still there. Fortunately, the ocular research world is small, so he sees old friends at events worldwide. He’s expecting to see both Walther and Jones at an event in Europe in October.
“I hope to visit Waterloo sometime,” he says. “After seven years, it became home.”
