The SPIE María J. Yzuel Educator Award is presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to optics education by an SPIE instructor or an educator in the field. Honorarium $2,000.
Across her career, María J. Yzuel has worked in diffraction image theory, image quality evaluation, apodization, applications to photolithography, optical pattern recognition, color information in correlators, liquid crystal devices, and design of filters. In 1971, she was the first woman to receive a professorship in optics and structure of matter at the University of Zaragoza; she joined the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona’s physics department in 1983. Yzuel has served as the president of SPIE, as the vice president of the International Commission for Optics, as general secretary of the European Optical Society, and as president of the Spanish Society of Optics.