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Optica Election for 2025 Board of Directors Positions

Candidates for 2025 Vice President

Please note: The candidates’ profiles may not appear in the same order as listed on the ballot.

Turan Erdogan
Turan Erdogan Profile
Plymouth Grating Laboratory, Inc., USA

Turan Erdogan has been studying, teaching, and practicing optics for 40 years. He is currently President of Plymouth Grating Laboratory, Inc. (PGL) in Carver, MA, the leading commercial supplier of diffraction gratings for pulse compression of ultrahigh-intensity lasers, for high-energy-laser spectral beam combining, and for other 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.

In 2000, Erdogan co-founded Semrock, Inc., which was acquired by IDEX in 2008. Semrock revolutionized the manufacturing of high-performance thin-film optical filters for fluorescence imaging and detection and Raman spectroscopy applications. Prior to Semrock, he was a tenured professor at The Institute of Optics of the University of Rochester, where he joined in 1994. There, he conducted research on fiber and waveguide devices and holographic optical materials. He taught courses offered to freshman through advanced graduate students and supervised both undergraduate and graduate research associates, graduating a number of Ph.D. students who have gone on to make their own marks in the world of optics. He also consulted with numerous companies around the world on Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) fiber-optic communications components and devices.

From 1992 to 1994, Erdogan was a post-doctoral researcher at Bell Laboratories, then part of AT&T. There, he developed numerous applications of fiber Bragg grating technology for precise wavelength control in DWDM communications systems and conducted research on the physics of ultraviolet photosensitivity in germanium-doped silica optical fibers, planar waveguides, and bulk glasses. He has a PhD from The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has authored or co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications and over 50 major conference talks, and holds more than 30 issued patents, with more than half of these covering optical devices in mass production today.

Erdogan has served as Program and General Chair of several major Optica (formerly OSA) conferences, including the FiO-LS Conference, the Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) Conference, and the Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity, and Poling in Glass Waveguides Topical Meeting. He has also served on a number of other conference organizing committees, the Rochester Section of the OSA, several Optica awards committees, several Optica councils, and the Optica (formerly OSA) Board of Directors.

He was awarded Optica’s David Richardson Medal, the Adolph Lomb Medal of the Optical Society of America, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, and a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award. In addition, he was named a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1999. He lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with his wife and has four grown children.

Turan Erdogan Statement
Plymouth Grating Laboratory, Inc., USA

Optica is a community. For some, the experience is so intimate it might even be considered a family. The health of a community—or a family—is determined at least in part by the health of its individual members. But I believe it’s more than that. The community itself can be strong or weak, vibrant or flaccid, alive or dead. And surely its health is also indicated by its external impact. Strong communities make a difference to people outside of the community.

I am excited to play a part in continuously improving the health of the Optica community. But how can we tell whether our health is improving or not? Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” In optics, our minds immediately go to the frustration we would feel trying to polish a lens or mirror without a good test plate or Fizeau interferometer.

Measuring the health of a business is straightforward. Financial metrics rule. You’ve got to see growth of both the top line (revenue) and the bottom line (profit). Growth of revenue without profit is useless. And growth of profit without revenue is almost never sustainable.

But what about measuring the health of Optica? What metrics should we focus on? For a community like ours, I believe our membership count is like revenue, and the impact we have is like profit. Just as revenue growth is a no-brainer for businesses, so is membership growth for Optica. If we’re not adding to our numbers, we’re probably not as healthy as we should be.

Impact, or the bottom line, is a little more subtle. Impact should be measurable for each of the three beneficiaries of a healthy community listed above: its individual members, the community itself and people outside the community.

Are Optica members truly benefiting from Optica? Are their careers advancing more rapidly? Are they learning new things and being inspired to develop, invent and create new ideas, theories or products?

How about the community itself? Are we connecting more globally than ever before? Are we growing more intimate? Are we blurring the lines that seem to be naturally drawn by geographic borders, gender and professional affiliation—or even making them transparent?

Finally, how is Optica impacting society outside of our community? Are we making it easier for great science to be done that will benefit people for generations to come? Are we facilitating the creation of great companies and helping established companies to thrive?

I am eager to work with Optica leaders, staff and members to refine the metrics for improving the health of our society. Having served on Optica’s Board of Directors, several councils including OIDA, several awards committees and several conference committees, and having co-chaired a number of Optica conferences, including FiO–LS and OFC, I believe I have the experience to find new and more effective ways to review and assess these metrics, and to set the right priorities which enable us to act on what we’ve learned.


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Min Gu
Min Gu Profile
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST), China

Min Gu is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) (2007) and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (2006) as well as an elected Foreign Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (2017). He is also an elected fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) (1999), the Optical Society of America (now Optica) (2004), the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) (2003), the Institute of Physics (UK) (2008), and the International Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) (2015) and as well as an elected Foreign Fellow of the Chinese Optical Society (2020).

Gu gained a PhD in optics from the Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (1987). He was awarded a prestigious Australian Research Fellowship of the Australian Research Council (ARC) (1990-1995) at the University of Sydney. He became a Professor (Chair) of Optoelectronics and the Director of Optical Technology Research Laboratory at Victoria University of Technology (1999). He was appointed Foundation Director of the Centre of Micro-Photonics (2000-2015) at Swinburne University of Technology. He was a Laureate Fellow of the ARC (2010-2015) and Pro Vice-Chancellor for International Research Collaboration and Research Capacity at Swinburne. He was Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2016-2019), RMIT University. Gu is currently the Executive Chancellor of the University Council and Professor of USST, China (2019-).

Gu was also a visiting professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore National University, Pusan National University, Shizuoka University, University of Oxford, Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne, University of St. Andrews, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Osaka University.

Gu has played a central role in nanoscale information optics, including multi-dimensional optical data storage and holography. He is the sole author of two standard reference books and the first author of two research books. He has over 600 journal publications in nano/biophotonics. He has been a member of the 20 Editorial Boards of top international journals in optics and photonics (including Applied Optics and Biomedical Optics Express). He has served on the advisory, steering, and organizing committees for many international conferences (including CLEO and FiO).

He was a director of the Board of the Optical Society of America (now Optica) and served on the Executive Committee, Finance Committee, as the Chair of the International Council, and on the Optica Nominating Council. He was President of the International Society of Optics within Life Sciences and Vice President of the Bureau of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) (Chair of the ICO Prize Committee, Galileo Galilei Award Committee). He served on the Young Scientist Prize Committee in Optics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

He is a recipient of the W. H. Steel Prize (Australian Optical Society, 2011), the Ian Wark Medal and Lecture (AAS, 2014), the Boas Medal (AIP, 2015), and the Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation in Physical Sciences (2016). He won the Dennis Gabor Award of the SPIE (2019) and the Emmett N. Leith Medal of Optica (2022).

Min Gu Statement
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST), China

I have been associated with Optica since I was a graduate student studying in optics and photonics. I have been so fortunate that I have contributed to the society in a variety of roles, including as a journal editor, a conference organizer, a council member and a member of the Board of Directors.

I served as a director of the Board of the Optical Society of America (now Optica) and served on its Executive Committee and Finance Committee. I also served on the Fellows and Honorary Members Committee of the society. I chaired the International Council and the Asia Working Group. I was a member of the Optica Nominating Council. I have also served on numerous organizing committees and program committees for the CLEO and FiO conferences. I have been a guest editor and a topical editor for Optical Technology and Biomedical Optics for Applied Optics, and have served on the editorial board of Biomedical Optics Express.

I have been willing to become involved in these activities because I am fully committed to the vision, the mission and the values of Optica. I am greatly honoured to be nominated as a candidate for the Vice President role of the society.

If elected, I will provide my experience, skills and knowledge to promote the society as a global community in optics and photonics. To this end, the society should be a diverse, inclusive platform for international collaboration in the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in light science, technology, engineering and education.

As one of its priorities, the society should create a strong, innovative linkage between industry, governments and the membership, so that the enabling role of optics and photonics can be promoted, enhanced and harvested worldwide. Equally important, the impact of the society largely lies in sustainable success in enhancing mentorship and educational opportunities for the next generation leaders in optics and photonics. They hold the key to a future where optics and photonics can enable better and greener solutions for many challenges that the world faces.

Specifically, I will work closely with the Optica leadership and staff as well as the optics and photonics community:



Candidates for 2025-2027 Director at Large (1 will be elected)

Please note: The candidates’ profiles may not appear in the same order as listed on the ballot.

Mihaela Dinu
Mihaela Dinu Profile
CACI International, Inc., USA

Mihaela Dinu is a Principal Photonics Solutions Architect in the Optical and Photonics Systems department, Technology Innovation and Labs-NSIS, CACI International, Inc. Since 2014, while at CACI (formerly LGS Innovations), she has performed development and research in a variety of areas in photonics, from high-power fiber optical amplifiers, silicon photonics for sensing, to laser transmitters and optical systems for free-space communications. She has served in lead systems engineering and optical architect roles for programs delivering space optical communications hardware for NASA, as well as for other missions. A notable example is laser transmitter hardware delivered to NASA/JPL for integration into the Deep Space Optical Communications demonstration on the Psyche mission.

Prior to 2014, Dinu was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent (previously Lucent Technologies) in Holmdel, NJ, where she conducted innovative research in diverse areas of photonics such as nonlinear optical effects, two-dimensional photonic crystals, ultrafast spectroscopy of quantum dots, signal processing in semiconductor devices, all-optical performance monitoring, high-speed all-optical logic in hybrid photonic integrated circuits, and parametric signal processing in fibers. Prior to joining Bell Labs, she received a PhD in Physics from Purdue University in the field of semiconductor nonlinear optics.

Dinu has long been involved with Optica as a volunteer, starting as a student member of the OSA (now Optica). She has been an author and reviewer for Optica journals, as well as for IEEE and APS journals. She has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE Photonics Journal. She has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee (EAC) of Optics and Photonics News, currently serving as EAC Chair. Dinu has been a technical committee member for Frontiers in Optics and CLEO/QELS, most recently in 2023 as subcommittee chair of CLEO S&I12 Lightwave Communications and Optical Networks. Dinu has authored or co-authored more than 60 publications. She holds nine patents related to photonic devices and systems.

Mihaela Dinu Statement
CACI International, Inc., USA

I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the position of Director-at-Large of Optica. As the premier global organization devoted to optics and photonics, Optica is at the center of a rich and expansive scientific and technological field that uniquely touches so many aspects of the world. I have considered Optica my professional home since graduate school. In thinking about the impact I could make as Director-at-Large, three topics come to my mind.

Industry engagement. Having worked in industry my entire career—first in applied research at Bell Labs and more recently in the field of space optical communications—I am familiar with the photonics industry ecosystem. I will strive to expand Optica’s already excellent efforts directed at engagement with industry. I will support Optica’s activities to promote industry networking and to foster industrial partnerships via its industry events, and I aim to identify avenues for augmenting those efforts.

Optica’s mission of keeping members informed on current science and technology developments relies on its stellar lineup of technical journals, membership newsletters, online resources and webinars. I am currently serving on the Editorial Advisory Committee of Optica’s membership magazine Optics & Photonics News, which has provided me with an opportunity to reflect on the needs of the Optica membership. I will work to explore new ways of engaging industry members in areas that benefit their careers and technical development.

Member engagement via local sections. Optica has a large and diverse global membership, yet the number of local sections in North America as well as worldwide is limited. I will advocate for amplifying the role of local sections, and for increasing their visibility as a framework for member participation. Local sections can be valuable resources for members who are not affiliated to centers of higher education or photonics hubs, for in-person networking and technical engagement. Local sections also offer opportunities for educational outreach, can benefit student members that graduate into industry jobs, and can reach members who may not participate in Optica’s scientific and technical conferences and meetings.

Climate action. Climate change is the fundamental and defining challenge of human civilization in our time. With photonics at the core of such technologies as renewable energy generation and greenhouse emission monitoring, Optica has an excellent track record of addressing this challenge. Subjects related to renewable energy and climate action are already being given close coverage by Optica conference organizers, such as within topical meetings at the Advanced Photonics Congress, and within Optica journals.

Still, I believe that Optica can do more to lead in addressing the challenge of climate change. If elected, I will work toward expanding Optica’s role in the fight against global warming. In addition to events and conferences centered around the role of optics and photonics in energy and climate, I will advocate for promoting initiatives to kickstart new approaches and partnerships for novel solutions and for fostering multi-disciplinary collaborations related to climate mitigation.


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Christine P. Hendon
Christine P. Hendon Profile
Columbia University, USA

Christine Hendon is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Vice Dean of Diversity and Strategic Partnerships within the Engineering School at Columbia University. Christine received a BS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2004 and the MS and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Biomedical Engineering in 2007 and 2010, respectively. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 2012. She joined Columbia University in 2012. At Columbia, 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 students. Hendon is also the director of the Structure Function Imaging Laboratory. Her research contributions have been developing optical systems and processing methods for enabling the extraction of architectural information and the identification of structural substrates within tissue.

The Structure-Function Imaging Laboratory has made several contributions toward the characterization of the human myocardium with optical coherence tomography and monitoring of ablation therapy with near-infrared spectroscopy. Hendon utilizes optical methods to address significant unmet clinical needs in cardiac electrophysiology. She has developed integrated OCT, NIRS, and ablation probes for real-time assessment of interventional procedures, along with processing tools for measuring lesion depth, monitoring, and generating substrate maps for procedural guidance. Hendon's recent research efforts are towards using optical coherence tomography and near-infrared spectroscopy to address unmet needs in women's health, with an emphasis on breast and uterine cancer.

She has received recognition for her work from Forbes' 30 under 30 in Science and Healthcare (2012), MIT Technology Review's 35 under 35 Innovators (2013), NIH New Innovator Award (2014), NSF CAREER Award (2015), and Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (2017). Prof. Hendon is a fellow of Optica, SPIE, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AMBIE).

Christine P. Hendon Statement
Columbia University, USA

Service is my opportunity to use my talents to impact others outside my laboratory or classroom. As a high school and undergraduate student, I participated in many outreach events, which were life-changing opportunities. As a faculty member, participating in service efforts is natural. I am privileged and honored to serve in my current roles with the university and use all of my experiences to provide different perspectives within the various communities and committees I am a part of.

My service to the biophotonics scientific community is highlighted through my participation as a reviewer for the US National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, and through my involvement with the Optica, SPIE and National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) professional societies. My service to the scientific community has broadened my perspective. I will utilize those experiences if allowed to serve as an Optica Director-at-Large.

Within Optica, I was appointed to the Optica Board of Meetings, starting a three-year term in January 2019, to represent the biomedical conferences that Optica sponsors, including the Optica Biophotonics Congress (Biomedical Optics and Optics in the Life Sciences) and the Optica European Conference on Biomedical Optics (ECBO). I co-chaired the conference meetings on Optical Coherence Tomography, Optical Tomography and Spectroscopy, and Bio-Optics Design and Applications. This year, I was the general chair of the Optica Biophotonics: Biomedical Optics Congress.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was a conference chair and member of the Board of Meetings in transitioning the conference to a virtual format. I also participated in the Optica Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Rapid Action Committee. These experiences have enabled me to think outside the box as we approach events organization to ensure we reach a wider audience.

Mentoring is another critical form of teaching and career development. My first service role within Optica was organizing the Meet the Expert event to facilitate mentoring events at the Biophotonics Congress. I am also the faculty advisor of the Optica/SPIE and NSBE student chapters at Columbia University. As a Director-at-Large, I will work toward the continued development of student and early-career researcher engagement and career development opportunities and continue working toward expanding access.