18 September 2018

The Optical Society Elects Constance J. Chang-Hasnain as 2019 Vice President

18 September 2018

The Optical Society Elects Constance J. Chang-Hasnain
as 2019 Vice President

Chang-Hasnain to serve as OSA president in 2021; two directors-at-large elected to OSA Board of Directors

WASHINGTON —The Optical Society (OSA) is pleased to announce that its members have elected Constance J. Chang-Hasnain, Associate Dean for Strategic Alliances, College of Engineering, and John R. Whinnery Distinguished Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California, Berkeley.

Two directors-at-large were also chosen during this year's election: Sophie LaRochelle, Université Laval, Canada, and Svetlana Boriskina, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. The announcement was made today during The Optical Society’s Annual Business Meeting at the 2018 OSA Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science APS/DLS conference in Washington, DC, USA. 

By accepting the vice presidency, Chang-Hasnain makes a four-year commitment to OSA's Board of Directors. She will serve one year as vice president in 2019, followed by one year as president-elect in 2020, president in 2021 and past-president in 2022.

Along with Chang-Hasnain, the new directors at large, LaRochelle and Boriskina will begin their terms on 1 January 2019. They will hold their positions for three years.

“Connie’s international and strategic experience is a perfect fit for the OSA’s officer position,” said Elizabeth Rogan, CEO of The Optical Society.  “Her numerous and effective volunteer roles reflect her strong connection with the photonics industry. Connie's years long involvement with OSA will undoubtedly provide a value to our members and be an asset to the Board.”

Dr. Constance J. Chang-Hasnain received her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Davis (1982) and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the UC, Berkeley (1987). She was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Communications Research (1987–1992) and Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (1992–1995). She joined UC Berkeley as Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1996.

In 2006, Chang-Hasnain was named Whinnery Distinguished Chair Professor in 2006 and served as chair of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group at UC Berkeley 2006-2017. She has been the Associate Dean for Strategic Alliances of College of Engineering since 2014.  She is the Founding Co-Director of Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) and the Chief Academic Officer of Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS) since 2015.  She is an Honorary Member of A.F. Ioffe Institute; a Chang Jiang Scholar Endowed Chair at Tsinghua University; and a Visiting Professor of Peking University, National Jiao Tung University  and National University of Singapore.
 
A 34-year OSA member, Chang-Hasnain served as CLEO Program Co-chair (1997) and General Co-chair (1999); OSA Slow and Fast Light Topical Meeting Program Co-Chair (2006) and General Co-chair (2007); and OSA Frontiers in Optics Conference General Co-Chair (2007). She was the General Technical Co-Chair (2004) and General Co-Chair (2005) for the Asia Pacific Optical Communications Conference.  Her other volunteer positions include: US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board; IEEE Photonics Society Board of Governors; and the U.S. National Research Council’s Board on Assessment of NIST Programs, Study on Optics and Photonics, and U.S. Advisory Committee to the International Commission on Optics.
 
Chang-Hasnain’s research interests range from semiconductor optoelectronic devices to materials and physics, with current foci on nano-photonic materials, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and their applications.  She has received the OSA Nick Holonyak Jr. Award (2007), IEEE David Sarnoff Award (2011), UNESCO Medal For the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies (2015), IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Award for Scientific Achievement (2003), the Microoptics Award from Japan Society of Applied Physics (2009), DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (2008), von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2009), and Guggenheim Fellowship (2009).  She is a Fellow of the OSA and IEEE, and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.  

 

Sophie LaRochelle is professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Université Laval, Canada, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Advanced Photonics Technologies for Communications. She is a member of the Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers, a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research network in Quebec. Her research activities focus on optical fiber design for MIMO-less spatial division multiplexing, multicore and multimode erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, and silicon photonic modulators and sensors. She obtained a Ph.D. degree in optics from the College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, USA.

LaRochelle has made contributions to passive and active fiber devices, and their application to optical signal processing of analog and digital communications. In 2015, she was named an OSA Fellow for “contributions to optical communications by proposing innovative fiber optic components such as super-structured fiber Bragg gratings for chromatic dispersion equalizers, multi-wavelength fiber lasers and optical code-division multiplexing.” She has served on the technical committees of numerous conferences, and several times as chair of subcommittees, including Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC), Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), and Bragg Grating, Photosensitivity and Poling in Glass Waveguides (BGPP).
 
Dr. Svetlana Boriskina is a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research blends nanophotonics, plasmonics, thermodynamics and mechanics to explore light-matter interactions on the nanoscale. She currently leads several research projects at MIT aimed at the development of smart photon-managing fabrics that provide thermal comfort indoors and outdoors, new meta-materials that manipulate light in unusual ways, and novel solar harvesting platforms to generate clean energy and provide fresh water to off-electrical-grid and disaster-stricken communities.

Boriskina holds a Ph.D. degree in Physics and Mathematics from the Kharkiv National University (KNU), one of leading research universities in the former USSR. She has authored more than 100 publications and holds many patents on optical sensor and photon energy conversion systems.  She received a Joint Award of the International Commission for Optics and the A. Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, a NATO-UK Royal Society Fellowship, and a SUMMA Graduate Fellowship in Electromagnetics. She has also been dedicated to student mentorship and teaching, having guided dozens of middle-to-graduate-school student mentees during her career in academia. She has also developed and taught award-winning new courses in optics and photonics at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
 
About The Optical Society
Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts. For more information, visit osa.org.

About FiO + LS
Frontiers in Optics is The Optical Society’s (OSA) Annual Meeting, which is held with Laser Science, a meeting sponsored by the American Physical Society’s Division of Laser Science (DLS). The two meetings unite the OSA and APS communities for five days of quality, leading-edge presentations, in-demand invited speakers and a variety of special events spanning a broad range of topics in optics and photonics—the science of light—across the disciplines of physics, biology and chemistry. The exhibit floor will feature prominent optics companies, technology products and programs. More information at: FrontiersinOptics.org. 

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