Dr. Herminso Villarraga-Gómez

Herminso started working at the age of 7 on his parents’ land in a small village in the Andean mountains of Colombia. At that age, he also started attending a rural school (a 1-hour walk from his home) to pursue his primary education. Five years later, while continuing to help his parents with cultivating the soil, growing crops, and raising livestock, he started his secondary education at a normal school (an école normale) where he received training to be a teacher. Once finishing, given his strong interests in math and science, he decided to leave his village in pursuit of higher education. Herminso holds a BS in Physics (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá), a MS in Physics (University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez), a MS in Optics (University of Central Florida, Orlando), and a PhD in Optical Science and Engineering (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC).

Today, Herminso is an X-ray Quality Solutions Manager at ZEISS. He specializes in industrial applications of X-ray computed tomography (CT) working in dimensional metrology, 3D imaging/microscopy, and nondestructive evaluation. He has been involved in establishing the accuracy and precision of 3D X-ray CT technologies and comparing its performance with other existing measuring techniques, e.g., tactile coordinate measurement machines (CMMs). He has worked in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB), the Centre for Geometrical Metrology at the Technical University of Denmark, the Center for Precision and Metrology at the University of North Carolina, and several other institutes and universities in the US. Herminso is the author of several peer-review articles, conference papers, and a book chapter. His current interests include advancing new manufacturing technologies, such as additive manufacturing, and contributing to the industry of quality control and nondestructive evaluation.