Turan Erdogan and Christine P. Hendon elected to Optica Board of Directors

23 September 2024

Turan Erdogan and Christine P. Hendon elected to Optica Board of Directors

Optica's membership selected Erdogan and Hendon during the 2024 election

WASHINGTON-Optica's membership has elected Turan Erdogan, President of Plymouth Grating Lab, to serve as 2025 Optica Vice President. Christine P. Hendon of Columbia University was elected as the 2025-2027 Director-at-Large. The 2024 election results were announced today at the Optica Annual Business Meeting, held during the Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science Conference, 23 - 26 September 2024.

"Turan is an accomplished leader. From his significant volunteer service with Optica, to his time on the faculty of the University of Rochester, and his corporate leadership at Melles Griot, IDEX, and PGL, he has shown an incredible ability to effectively work with both academia and industry while simultaneously supporting the optics and photonics community." said Elizabeth Nolan, interim CEO of Optica. "We are excited to welcome Turan to the Optica Board of Directors."

Turan Erdogan currently serves as the President of Plymouth Grating Laboratory, Inc. (PGL) in Carver, Massachusetts, the leading commercial supplier of diffraction gratings for pulse compression of ultrahigh-intensity lasers for high-energy-laser and spectral-beam combining, as well as laser applications. Prior to joining PGL in 2016, Erdogan was the site leader of Melles Griot in Rochester, New York, a leading provider of high-performance lens assemblies and optical systems for biological imaging, semiconductor metrology, and other applications. He also served from 2011 to 2016 as the CTO and Vice President of Business Development for the IDEX Optics & Photonics platform.

Erdogan has served as Program Chair and General Chair of several major Optica conferences, including Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science Conference, the Optical Fiber Communications Conference, and the Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity, and Poling in Glass Waveguides Topical Meeting. He served on a number of other conference organizing committees, the Rochester Section of the Optical Society of America, several Optica awards committees, several Optica councils, and the Optica Board of Directors.

He was awarded Optica's David Richardson Medal, the Adolph Lomb Medal, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, and a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award.

Christine P. Hendon is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Vice Dean of Diversity and Strategic Partnerships within the Engineering School at Columbia University. In her role, Hendon teaches optical systems and digital image processing to a diverse student population, including electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, applied physics, and mechanical engineering. She is the director of the Structure Function Imaging Laboratory. Her research contributions include optical systems and methods to extract architectural information and identify structural substrates within tissue.

Christine received recognition for her work from Forbes' 30 under 30 in Science and Healthcare, MIT Technology Review's 35 under 35 Innovators, the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering.

Among her many accolades, Hendon is a Fellow of Optica, SPIE and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

About Optica

Optica, Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is the society dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. Optica's renowned publications, meetings, online resources and in-person activities fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate scientific, technical and educational achievement. Discover more at: Optica.org

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