SPIE Senior Member Andrea Armani, assistant professor and the Fluor Early Career Chair of Engineering at University of Southern California (USA), has been selected as one of Popular Science's "Brilliant Ten" for 2013.
Armani was cited for developing biological and chemical sensors and other optical tools that can detect biological weapons, waterborne pathogens, disease, or radioactivity.
"Armani's devices outstrip the capabilities of standard optics," the magazine said. "Some can withstand temperature swings without losing precision; others can pick up proteins in dry air. She wants them to work in real-world conditions and approaches the task with impressive efficiency."
Armani is scheduled to present her research group's work at SPIE Micro+Nano Materials, Devices, and Applications in Australia in December as well as give seminars at Swinburne University and the University of Queensland.
She will also give an invited talk on challenges in resonant cavity biosensor design at LASE, part of SPIE Photonics West, in February and chair a session on biosensing and plasmons at the Laser Resonators, Microresonators, and Beam Control conference.
Armani, whose PhD is from the California Institute of Technology, has received numerous awards, including a Young Investigator Award at SPIE Photonics West (2008). She has also been honored with the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2009), the Technology Review Top 35 Innovators under 35 (2009), the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program New Investigator Award (2010), the USC Mellon Mentoring Award for Undergraduate Mentoring (2010), the NIH New Innovator Award (2010), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2010).
Each year, Popular Science seeks out the brightest young scientists and engineers and names them the Brilliant Ten.
Also on the magazine's list was Heather Knutson, an astronomer from Caltech who studies exoplanet meteorology. Knutson was a co-author of "NIMBUS: The Near-Infrared Multi-Band Ultraprecise Spectroimager for SOFIA" at the 2012 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation symposium. The paper is available in the SPIE Digital Library: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.927094
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