Giti Khodaparast named fellow of international society of optics and photonics
Giti Khodaparast, physics professor and L.C. Hassinger Faculty Fellow in Nanoscience, has been elected a 2025 fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. SPIE welcomed Khodaparast, along with 46 others, as a new member of the society earlier this year.
Khodaparast, of the Department of Physics in the College of Science, joins the other fellows in being honored for their excellent technical achievements as well as for their substantial service to the optics and photonics community and to SPIE. Fellows are members of the society who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. Since the society's inception in 1955, more than 1,800 SPIE members have become fellows.
“I’m excited to welcome our newest SPIE Fellows to the society,” said Peter E. Anderson of Technical University of Denmark and chair of the SPIE Fellows Committee. “It’s a pleasure to honor their technical achievements, their commitment to SPIE, as well as to the wider optics and photonics community.”
Mark Pitt, professor and chair of the Department of Physics, said the recognition is “a well-deserved honor for Giti.”
“This fellowship recognizes Giti’s outstanding research program in multifunctional materials,” said Pitt, “and also her significant service to the optics community through her participation in SPIE events and committees and organization of optics and photonics conferences.”
Khodaparast explained her work: “Optics and photonics are important global research directions with tremendous impacts on many advanced science and technology areas, including communications, imaging and sensing, medical, energy, and national security. My group educated several outstanding students in modern experimental optical research and contributed to the spectroscopy of multifunctional materials under extreme conditions.”
These research directions were supported in recent years by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the L.C. Hassinger Faculty Fellowship at Virginia Tech. Khodaparast was also elected as a fellow of OPTICA in 2024.