#FacesofPhotonics: Ball Aerospace Program Manager Allison Barto

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.

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Photonics for a Better World

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