- Dr Samantha Strong has won a 2026 Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) Textbook Excellence Award
- Her book, Introduction to Visual Optics: A Light Approach, aims to provide accessible and fun education to students
- The Textbook Excellence Award recognises excellence in current textbooks and learning materials
Aston University senior lecturer in optometry Dr Samantha Strong has won a 2026 Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) Textbook Excellence Award for her book Introduction to Visual Optics: A Light Approach.
The TAA provides a wide range of professional development resources, events, and networking opportunities for textbook authors and authors of scholarly journal articles and books, as well as presenting its awards annually.
The Textbook Excellence Award recognises excellence in current textbooks and learning materials. The judges consider a book’s content and scholarship, including accuracy, depth and contribution to the field, the writing clarity and style, and the book’s effectiveness in teaching and learning.
Introduction to Visual Optics: A Light Approach is aimed at optometry students, optometrists, ophthalmology residents, student dispensing opticians, and others in the eye care field. Dr Strong wrote the book to provide the necessary foundational knowledge in visual optics in an easy-to-read format.
Visual optics is the branch of optics that focuses on how light interacts with materials like lenses and the eye. Crucially, it utilises principles of maths and physics to predict things like how light may change direction under certain conditions. This is core for optometry students in terms of understanding how eyes produce an image, why vision can become blurry, how glasses and contact lenses correct this, and how to image the internal structures of the eye.
Dr Strong said:
“I'm very proud to see Introduction to Visual Optics: A Light Approach recognised with this award. My aim was to help students enjoy learning optics through accessible and fun education. Hopefully my book has inspired readers to explore their inner visual optics 'geek' and will build their confidence in further learning.”
The judges said:
“Introduction to Visual Optics, a beautifully designed and engaging textbook that brings optics to life through clarity, interactivity, and real-world relevance, deserves to win the Textbook Excellence Award. This text makes the study of optics both approachable and inspiring.”