Dr. María Viñas Peña

Maria Vinas is currently a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow at Wellman Center for Photomedicine-Harvard Medical School (USA). She completed undergraduate studies in Optics and Optical Engineering in the UCM, developed her predoctoral work at the Visual Optics & Biophotonics Lab (CSIC), and obtained her PhD in Physics (UCM) in 2016. Dr. Maria Vinas research focuses on the study of the physics of vision and vision psychophysics, as well as novel ocular treatments through the use of different biophotonics technologies (Adaptive Optics, Optical Coherence Elastography, SHG microscopy). Her work has led to significant contributions, in the form of high impact publications, conference presentations, and technology transfer in the areas of chromatic aberrations in phakic and pseudophakic eyes and their impact on vision; optical, visual and neural effects of astigmatism, high order aberrations and presbyopic corrections, simulated with adaptive optics. She is also founding member of the spin-off company, 2EyesVision, which develops clinical visual simulators.

Dr. Vinas has also received recognitions from scientific societies (OSA, ARVO). In particular, she was elected OSA Ambassador of the Optical Society of America in 2019. She is past president of IOSA -Institute of Optics OSA Student Chapter- where among a wide range of activities she has authored a very successful book of optical experiments (Discovering Light: Fun Experiments with Optics | (2021) | Viñas-Peña | Publications | Spie). Currently she is the vice-chair of the Visual Sciences Committee of the Spanish Optical Society, and chair of the Women in Optics and Photonics committee of the Spanish Optical Society, where she fights gender stereotypes in STEM.