Daniel Vukobratovich: The 2020 SPIE President’s Award

Daniel Vukobratovich, a senior principal multi-disciplinary engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems and adjunct professor at the Wyant College of Optical Sciences, has been sharing his expertise in optomechanical design by teaching SPIE courses as well as participating in other related activities for more than three decades. Vukobratovich has attended every SPIE Optics + Photonics meeting since 1981, and has taught regularly at SPIE conferences since 1985. As one of the Society's earliest short-course instructors, his approach as always been, "Whatever is best for SPIE." Reviews of his courses, as his award-nominating materials point out, "are glowing."

The SPIE Fellow has chaired 17 SPIE optomechanical design conferences since 1986 and is a founding member of the SPIE working group in optomechanics. He has served as the SPIE Publications Committee chair and, from 1995-96, was a member of the SPIE Board of Directors and the SPIE Executive Committee. With the late SPIE Fellow Paul R. Yoder, Vukobratovich is the author of the SPIE Press publication Field Guide to Binoculars and Scopes as well as two other high-profile reference books, Fundamentals of Optomechanics and Opto-Mechanical Systems Design.

"Dan has always been generous about sharing his expertise and enthusiasm for optomechanical design, whether that's by giving lectures here at the University of Arizona or through his famous SPIE Short Courses," notes Wyant College of Optical Sciences professor and SPIE President-Elect John Greivenkamp." My short course is usually just down the hallway from Dan's, and he always has more attendees than me — and his course runs for a full two days!"

Read more about Daniel Vukobratovich and the SPIE President's Award.