Skip to main content

#FacesofPhotonics: Ball Aerospace Program Manager Allison Barto

Image
By

Allison Barto
"'Where did we come from?' and 'Are we alone?' are two of the most fundamental questions humans have been asking throughout history. I get to be involved in supporting astrophysics research at a time when we have the technology to take meaningful steps toward answering those questions."
Allison Barto is a force to be reckoned with in the astrophysics community — she graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Physics and has worked at Ball Aerospace for 21 years. Currently, she is the Senior Program Manager for both the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, Camera Optics.

 "The James Webb Space Telescope will be able to observe the first generation of luminous objects after the Big Bang," she says, "and detect possible signatures of life in the atmospheres of extra-solar planets."

 Allison has also been an active member of the SPIE community for many years, including being Symposium Chair for SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation and Conference Chair and Committee Member at SPIE Optics + Photonics. In August 2019, Allison and Johnathan Arenberg of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems presented an open letter to future flagship designers at Optics + Photonics. It "conveys the main lessons learned by the authors from their tenures on Chandra, JWST, and the current studies of decadal missions." 
Enjoy the SPIE Faces of Photonics interview with Allison! You can read it here.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Ways to Celebrate the first International Day of Light

By
The first International Day of Light (IDL) is less than a month away. A global initiative highlighting the importance of light and light-based technologies, communities around the world are planning events celebrating IDL on 16 May. First Place Winner of the 2017 SPIE IDL Photo Contest SPIE will participate in outreach events local to our community in Bellingham, Washington, attend the inauguration in Paris, France, and host an IDL reception for our conference attendees at SPIE Optical Systems Design in Frankfurt, Germany taking place May 14-17. SPIE is also supporting local events in 13 different communities from the US to India, Canada to South Africa, who were awarded SPIE IDL Micro Grants to create activities that highlight the critical role light plays in our daily lives. Do you need some ideas on how to show your appreciation of light on the 16th? Here is our top ten list of ways you can celebrate IDL 2018: 1. Throw a Celebration:  Light up your party with ligh...
Post a Comment
Read more

#FacesofPhotonics: NASA Intern Elaine Stewart

By
MIRROR, MIRROR: Elaine with the JWST at Goddard Space  Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland Meet Elaine Stewart: chemical engineering student, world-traveler, intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and this week's SPIE Face of Photonics. Elaine is fascinated by space exploration and how optics impacts our ability to "study distant stars that have never been seen before." Her research has taken her around the world -- from Bochum, Germany, where she studied material science and engineering at Ruhr-Universität, to Houston, Texas, to work on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) while it was under cryogenic vacuum chamber testing, to Melbourne, Australia, where she studied biochemical and product engineering at the University of Melbourne in 2017. And, when she's not busy traversing the globe, she is focusing on graduating from the University of Delaware in 2019 with a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering. Elaine makes a point of remaining an active...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cataract surgery: misnomer?

By
On left, the patient’s left eye has no cataract and all structures are visible. On right, retinal image from fundus camera confirms the presence of a cataract. (From Choi, Hjelmstad, Taibl, and Sayegh, SPIE Proc. 85671Y , 2013)   Article by guest blogger Roger S. Reiss , SPIE Fellow and recipient of the 2000 SPIE President's Award. Reiss was the original Ad Hoc Chair of SPIE Optomechanical Working Group. He manages the LinkedIn Group “ Photonic Engineering and Photonic Instruments .” The human eye and its interface with the human brain fit the definition of an "instrument system."   The human eye by itself is also an instrument by definition. After the invention of the microscope and the telescope, the human eye was the first and only detector for hundreds of years, only to be supplemented and in most cases supplanted by an electro-optical detector of various configurations. The evolution of the eye has been and still is a mystery.   In National Geogr...
6 comments
Read more