OMIG offers special thanks and appreciation to The Leiter Family for establishing the Harry Hirsch Leiter recipient of best paper. Open to all presenters, the best paper is chosen by the OMIG Board during the business luncheon, which follows each annual meeting. To acknowledge this generous honorarium of $500.00, recipients give an encore presentation of their winning paper the following year.
| Awardees | Titles | Year |
| Robert Snyder, MD, PhD | Increased Risk of Endophthalmitis in Clear Cornea Cataract Surgery | 2002 |
| Kevin Miller, MD | Do Flies Transmit Trachoma? | 2003 |
| Shinichiro Kobayakawa, MD, PhD | Biofilm Formation by E. faecalis on Intraocular Lens Material | 2004 |
| Mary Marquart, PhD | Topical Cholesterol as an Effective Treatment for Pneumococcal Keratitis | 2005 |
| Christine Toutain-Kidd, MD | A Common Additive to Eyedrops, Polysorbate 80, Inhibits Biofilm Formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa | 2006 |
| Agnieszka Nagpal, MD | Fusarium and Acanthamoeba Keratitis: Can a Single Center Detect Outbreaks? | 2007 |
| Alfonso Iovieno, MD | Endosymbionts as Co-Pathogens in Acanthamoeba Keratitis | 2008 |
| B.H. Jeng, MD | Epidemiology of Ulcerative Keratitis in Northern California | 2009 |
| Nisha R. Acharya, MD | Topical Fluoroquinolone Use as a Risk Factor for In Vitro Fluoroquinolone Resistance in Ocular Cultures | 2010 |
| Russell N. Van Gelder, MD | Application of Biome Representational in Silico Karyotyping to Characterization of the Contact Lens Microbiome | 2011 |
| Irmgard Behlau, MD | An Update on Boston Keratoprosthesis Infectious Endophthalmitis: Incidence and Prevention |
2012 |
| Russell N. Van Gelder, MD | Torque Teno Virus Associated with Culture Negative Endophthalmitis | 2013 |
| Richard A. Eiferman, MD | Put the Preservative in the Bottle, Not in the Eye! | 2014 |
| Kimberly D. Tran, MD | Epidemiology of Herpes Zoster Ophthalmicus: Recurrence and Chronicity | 2015 |
| Kimberly Brothers, PhD | Insight Into the Corneal Wound Healing Response: Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analysis of Corneal Epithelial Cells Challenged By Bacteria | 2016 |
| Grace Shih, MD | Diphtheroids as a Corneal Pathogen in Chronnic Ocular Surface Disease | 2017 |
| Jeremy Keenan, MD | In VitroSynergy Testing of Commonly Used Anti-Amoebic Agents: Antogonism of Voriconazole | 2018 |
| Lawson Ung, MD | Validation of a Comprehensive Clinical Algorithm for the Assessment and Treatment of Microbial Keratitis | 2019 | Ethan Adre | The Efficacy of Riboflavin Versus Rose Bengal Photodynamic Antimicrobial Therapy on South Florida Nocardia Keratitis Isolates | 2020 |
| Hamidah Mahmud, BA, MPhil | Targeted Mass Azithromycin Distribution for Trachoma: A Community-Randomized Trial (TANA II) | 2021 | Marcela Huertas-Bello, MD | Genipin Corneal Crosslinking Treatment in a Fusarium solani Keratitis Model | 2022 |
Ocular Microbiology and Immunology Group, Inc. 