2019 SPIE Election Opens July 1

SPIE exists to serve people working in optics and photonics research, education, industry, and policy. SPIE is able to make this impact because of the dedicated volunteers who serve on SPIE committees and the Board of Directors. These people steer our decisions and activities, and ultimately determine how those $4 million dollars of community support are spent.

Every year, SPIE Members have the opportunity to elect the leadership who will guide the direction of SPIE. In the 2019 election, four new directors and a secretary/treasurer will be elected, in addition to a new vice president.

The candidates for vice president are SPIE Fellows Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University, and Kyle Myers, director of the Division of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Software Reliability for the US Food and Drug Administration.

Mahadevan-Jansen is the founding director of the Biophotonics Center at Vanderbilt University. Her research group focuses on applications of optical techniques for diagnosis of pathology and neuromodulation, including clinical translation of optical spectroscopies and imaging for disease diagnosis and guidance of therapy. She has previously served on the SPIE Board of Directors and the following SPIE committees: Diversity and Inclusion Ad Hoc, Awards, Membership and Communities, and Fellows.

Myers received her PhD in optical sciences from the University of Arizona in 1985. She coauthored the book Foundations of Image Science with Dr. Harrison H. Barrett in 2004, which won the First Biennial Goodman Book Writing Award from OSA and SPIE. In addition to serving on the SPIE Board of Directors, she has also been a member of the SPIE Awards Committee and Membership and Communities Committee. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Medical Imaging.

The person elected vice president for 2020 will join the SPIE presidential chain, becoming SPIE president-elect in 2021 and president of the Society in 2022. The officers currently in the presidential chain are SPIE President Jim Oschmann, retired from Ball Aerospace, SPIE President-Elect John Grievenkamp of the University of Arizona, and SPIE Vice President David Andrews of the University of East Anglia.

Jason Mulliner, CFO at Alluxa (USA), is the candidate for secretary/treasurer. Mulliner previously served as secretary/treasurer in 2019. He has also served as a judge for the SPIE Startup Challenge, and currently serves on the SPIE Committee for Compensation and the Financial Advisory Committee.

Four positions are open for SPIE directors, who will serve three-year terms. The candidates are:

• Dan Curticapean, Offenburg University (Germany)
• Anderson Gomes, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Brazil)
• Babak Parviz, Amazon Web Services (USA)
• Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop, The University of Queensland (Australia)
• Cristina Solano, Centro de Investigaciones en Óptica (Mexico)
• Sarun Sumriddetchkajorn, National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Thailand)
• J. Scott Tyo, University of New South Wales Canberra (Australia)
• Katie Schwertz, Edmund Optics, Inc. (USA)

SPIE President Jim Oschmann will become immediate past president. He will announce the election results at the SPIE Annual General Meeting at Optics + Photonics in San Diego, California, on 13 August.