WHatice Altuğ is a Turkish physicist and professor in the Bioengineering Department and head of the Bio-nanophotonic Systems laboratory at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland. Her research focuses on nanophotonics for biosensing and surface enhanced spectroscopy, integration with microfluidics and nanofabrication, to obtain high sensitivity, label-free characterization of biological material. She has developed low-cost biosensor allowing the identification of viruses such as Ebola that can work in difficult settings and therefore particularly useful in case of pandemics.
WBetty Lise Anderson is an American electrical engineer, working in the field of photonics. She has been a professor at the Ohio State University since 1990. She is a Fellow of SPIE, and a Senior Member of the Optical Society of America and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
WAndrea Martin Armani is the Ray Irani Chair in Engineering and Materials Science and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She was awarded the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from Barack Obama and is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
WPatricia Era Bath was an American ophthalmologist, inventor, humanitarian, and academic. She was an early pioneer of laser cataract surgery. She also became first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American person to serve as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University. She was also the first African-American woman to serve on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. The holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.
WPolina Leopoldovna Bayvel is a British engineer and academic. She is currently Professor of Optical Communications & Networks in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London. She has made major contributions to the investigation and design of high-bandwidth multiwavelength optical networking.
WEmma Beckwith was an American suffragette, bookkeeper, optician, and inventor.
WAlexandra Boltasseva is Ron And Dotty Garvin Tonjes Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University, and editor-in-chief for The Optical Society's Optical Materials Express journal. Her research focuses on plasmonic metamaterials, manmade composites of metals that use surface plasmons to achieve optical properties not seen in nature.
WYvette Cauchois was a French physicist known for her contributions to x-ray spectroscopy and x-ray optics, and for pioneering European synchrotron research.
WConstance J. Chang-Hasnain is a Taiwanese-born American electrical engineer, and the John R. Whinnery Chair Professor and associate dean for strategic alliances, College of Engineering, the University of California, Berkeley. She is also the current vice president of The Optical Society and will serve as president in 2021.
WAzita Emami-Neyestanak is the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at CalTech. Emami works on low-power mixed-mode circuits in scalable technologies. She is Executive Officer of the Department of Electrical Engineering and an investigator in the Heritage Medical Research Institute.
WUrsula Jane Gibson is a professor of physics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who specialises in novel core optical fibres. Gibson was the president of The Optical Society in 2019.
WSusan Nicole Houde-Walter is an academic and technical executive in the field of optics. She was Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester from 1987-2005. She is now running LaserMaxDefense, a manufacturer of laser equipment for military and law enforcement. She served as president of the Optical Society in 2005 and has travelled extensively with the US military.
WMona Jarrahi is an Iranian Engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She investigates novel materials, terahertz/millimeter-wave electronics and optoelectronics, microwave photonics, imaging and spectroscopy systems.
WMary Lou Jepsen is a technical executive and inventor in the fields of display, imaging, and computer hardware. Her contributions have had worldwide adoption in head-mounted display, HDTV, laptop computers, and projector products; she was the technical force behind a generation of low-cost computing, and innovative consumer and medical imaging technologies. She was named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, was named in 2013 to CNN's top 10 thinkers in science and technology for her work in display innovation, and she has over 200 patents published or issued.
WGihan Kamel is an Egyptian physicist known for her work as an Infrared Beamline Scientist in the Synchrotron-light project for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). She lives in Jordan.
WUrsula Keller has been a physics professor at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland since 2003 with a speciality in ultra-fast laser technology, an inventor and the winner of the 2018 European Inventor Award by the European Patent Office.
WAnne L'Huillier is a French physicist, and professor of atomic physics at Lund University.
WSophie LaRochelle is a Canada Research Chair and professor of engineering at the Université Laval. She specializes in developing fiber optic components for signal-processing and data transmission in telecommunication networks.
WCarmiña Londoño is a Deputy Division Director at the National Science Foundation. She previously spent 13 years at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she led the Global Standards and Information Group. Londoño spent two terms on the Board of Directors of SPIE, and won their Director's Award in 2019.
WProfessor Tanya Mary Monro FAA FTSE FOSA FAIP GAICD is an Australian physicist known for her work in photonics. She has been Australia's Chief Defence Scientist since 8 March 2019. Prior to that she was the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Innovation (DVCR&I) at the University of South Australia. She was awarded the ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2013. She was the inaugural chair of photonics, the inaugural director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics and the inaugural director of the Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing (IPAS), and the inaugural director of the Centre of Expertise in Photonics (CoEP) within the School of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Adelaide. Monro has remained an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Adelaide following her departure from the institution.
WEllen Ochoa is an American engineer, former astronaut and former director of the Johnson Space Center. In 1993 Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Ochoa became director of the center upon the retirement of the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012. She was the first Hispanic director and the second female director of Johnson Space Center.
WMalini Olivo is a Professor of Biophotonics at the National University of Ireland, Galway and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. In 2015, she was elected by the Optical Society of America for "pioneering contribution in Clinical Photodiagnostics in the area of clinical spectroscopy and imaging in early cancer detection and photo-therapeutics of cancer".
WMichelle Povinelli is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California (USC) and Fellow of the OSA and SPIE. Povinelli's research in nanophotonics focuses on the behavior of light inside complex materials.
WRebecca Richards-Kortum is an American bioengineer and the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University. She is a professor in the departments of Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and she is the Director of Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health, and the Founder of Beyond Traditional Borders. She is the Director of the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, and serves as the advisor to the Provost on health-related research. Richards-Kortum is the recipient of the Pierre Galletti Award, the highest honor from the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), for her contributions to global health care and bioengineering technology.
WMary Jacquiline Romero is a quantum physicist in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research expertise and interests are in the field of quantum foundations and quantum information. In particular, Romero is an experimental quantum physicist studying the properties of single photons for the development of new quantum alphabets and the nature of quantum causality.
WMiriam Cather Simpson is a New Zealand-American physics/chemistry academic and entrepreneur. She is currently a professor at the University of Auckland, a joint appointment between the physics and chemistry departments. She is the founder of the Photon Factory laser lab at the University of Auckland and the chief science officer for two spin-off companies, Engender Technologies and Orbis Diagnostics. She is an Associate Investigator for the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies and an Emeritus Investigator for the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. She was awarded the Royal Society Te Apārangi Pickering Medal in 2019. She has a strong focus on teaching, mentoring and public outreach and is an outspoken advocate for issues of gender equality and ethics in science.
WDonna Theo Strickland, is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped pulse amplification. She is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
WDavida Young Teller was a professor in the Departments of Psychology and Physiology/Biophysics at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. She was a leader in the scientific study of infant visual development.
WJessica Alice Feinmann Wade is a British physicist in the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London. Her research investigates polymer-based organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Her public engagement work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) champions women in physics as well as tackling systemic biases such as gender bias on Wikipedia and racial bias on Wikipedia.
WPatricia R. Wakeling (1923-2016) was the recipient of the Optical Society of America (OSA) Stephen D. Fantone Distinguished Service Award in 1990 and Managing Editor of the scientific journal Applied Optics for three decades. Wakefield was integral in the launch of OSA's first two journals.
WLaura Ann Waller is a computer scientist and Ted Van Duzer Endowed Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Fellowship to develop microscopes to image deep structures within the brain in 2017 and won the 2018 SPIE Early Career Award.