Women in Optics Calendar
Ferechteh H. Teherani, CEO and co-founder of Nanovation Sarl in France, enjoys being an entrepreneur and optical scientist. But she wishes that early in her career, someone had asked, "Can I help you?"
For the last six years, that kind of help and encouragement that Teherani longed for as she began her career in optics has been featured in a free monthly planner published by SPIE.
"Those of us already working as optics and photonics professionals need to do what we can to encourage and mentor students and other young researchers so that their energy and ideas can be applied to solving the world's problems," says SPIE's 2009 President Maria Yzuel, who is featured in the 2009 Women in Optics calendar with Teherani and some 20 other women working in optics.
Copies of the planner are available at no cost from SPIE by sending an e-mail request.
The women profiled for 2009 are shaping our future by sharing what they do and what inspires them and by introducing the myriad of career opportunities available in the optics and photonics field. Yzuel, a physics professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain for the last 25 years, says: "If you want to help shape the future, a career in optics and photonics is worth exploring.
"Many of the challenges the world faces in energy, health, and the environment may be solved with the help of this exciting technology. Your imagination and energy is just what's needed."
The 2009 Women in Optics planner features heads of university departments and government labs along with those with successful careers in research, marketing, astronomy and astronautics, teaching, product development, and writing about optics and photonics. Their jobs range from developing more effective medical imaging for diagnostics, to researching black holes, to training students for much-needed technical positions in labs.
"It is exciting to face new challenges every day, to feel that there is always some new process to explore, some new technological development to pursue, something new to learn," says Roberta Ramponi, a professor at Polytechnic of Milan, Italy. Ramponi teaches physics and micro- and nano-optics, and does research on the development of novel photonic and optofluidic devices. She is a past president of the European Optical Society, and is among those featured in the planner.
Other optics professionals featured in the planner include:
- Anna Cysewska-Sobusiak, Poznan University of Technology
- Barbara Darnell, sales and marketing consultant
- Carmen Menoni, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Colorado State University
- Claire Max, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Jannick Rolland, professor of optics, University of Rochester
- Ellen Ochoa, deputy director of NASA's /Johnson Space Center
- Marta de la Fuente, Indra Systems and a member of the SPIE Board of Directors
- Katarzyna Chalasinska-Macukow, University of Warsaw
- Kathryn Flanagan, head of the James Webb Space Telescope Mission Office, Space Telescope Science Institute
- Lisa Tsufura, marketing manager at CVI Melles Griot Laser Group and a member of the SPIE Board of Directors
- Martina Havenith, chair of physical chemistry, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
- Patrizia Melpignano, LAPLACE, Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse
- Mireille Commandré, Fresnel Institute
- Xiangqun Cui, Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology
- Rachel Pei Chin Won, associate editor, Nature Photonics
- Angela Guzman, Florida Atlantic University
- Tina Kidger, proprietor, Kidger Optics Associates
- Kashiko Kodate, science professor, Japan Women's University
- Liz Rogan, Optical Society of America Silvia Ledesma, University of Buenos Aires
Read more short profiles of women in optics featured in the 2009 Women in Optics Calendar.
Other links about careers in optics
