Photonics for a Better World

SPIE Women in Optics program has been enhancing and promoting the personal and professional growth of women in STEM since 1998. With its proactive focus on diversity, inclusivity, gender equity, SPIE leverages its extensive networks as well as its funding programs to support professionals and students alike. Two Society grant programs, currently open for application, offer critical opportunities to SPIE Members, their communities, and their families. The SPIE Women in Optics Activity Grant Networking lunches and diversity coffee-and-cake meetups; hosting high-profile visiting speakers; recruiting and building groups of students interested in optics-focused careers; running STEM-engagement workshops aimed at young girls; and creating symposiums at which students interact with women professionals from industry and academia: these are just a few of the myriad activities that recipients of the SPIE Women in Optics Activity Grant have implemented around the world. The program, now en...

2018 Hillenkamp Fellow Haley Marks with the first prototypes of the oxygen-sensing hydrogels, developed in collaboration with BU Winning the inaugural $75,000 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship in Problem-Driven Biophotonics and Biomedical Optics has had its fair share of notable impact on Haley Marks' life and profession. The fellowship, which supports and provides opportunities for translating new technologies to clinical practice for improving human health was awarded for the first time in January 2018 at SPIE Photonics West . "I actually found out that I won in December, just as I was getting ready to fly home for the holidays," she recalls. "I was packing when I got a call from Rox Anderson, the director of our center, the Wellman Center for Photomedicine , congratulating me, and I got all flustered. I swung by the lab on the way to the airport to celebrate the news with my mentor, Dr. Conor Evans, and our colleagues, and ended up missing m...

The first International Day of Light was 16 May 2018, and SPIE joined citizens around the globe in celebration of lifesaving, life-enhancing light. To assist communities in the organization of their own celebrations of light, SPIE made available micro-grants worth up to US$3,000 to help fund and execute their events.  Available to SPIE Members, the grants provided for planned activities that highlighted the critical role that light plays in our daily lives. The activity also had to occur during the month of May 2018 and tie directly to the inaugural event on the 16th. Our 2018 SPIE IDL Micro Grant recipients included: Martina Mrongovius and the Center for the Holographic Arts (USA) Thouakesseh Jeremie Zoueu and Institut National Polytechnique Felix Houphouet-Boigny (Cote D'Ivoire) Amar Deo Chandra and IISER Kolkata (India) Jesús Carlos Alberto Obando Aguirre and the Instituto de Luz Ambiente y Visión (Argentina) P.T. Ajith Kumar and Light Logics Holograp...