Carmen Menoni is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University, USA. Menoni’s group has made internationally recognized contributions to optical engineering in two areas. Through fundamental studies of the structural and optical properties of sputtered amorphous oxides, Menoni is pushing the frontiers in interference coatings for ultra-high intensity lasers, with applications to inertial fusion energy, and gravitational wave detectors. Menoni has also pioneered the use of bright pencil-like extreme ultraviolet laser beams in novel nanoscale imaging and spectrometry methodologies.

Menoni is the Director of a recently established Inertial Fusion Energy hub, RISE, supported by the Department of Energy IFE STAR Program, Fusion Energy Science. The RISE hub, a partnership among universities, US Laboratories and industry, provides the framework to investigate innovative laser and target technologies with the goal to accelerate inertial fusion energy and train the workforce that will support its practical implementation.

Menoni is a Fellow of Optica, IEEE, APS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and SPIE. Menoni is the recipient of the IEEE Women in Photonics Excellence Award (2023) and the Willis Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics (2023). Menoni was President of the IEEE Photonics Society in 2020-2021. As a result of her work between academia and industry, she was the recipient of the Colorado Technology Award in 1998 and in 2000 for the development of products and processes that were transitioned to industry.

In 2024, she received the Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, “For seminal contributions to the materials aspects and engineering of amorphous oxides for optical coatings of high intensity lasers and gravitational wave detectors.”