Prof. Cather Simpson elected into SPIE presidential chain

27 Aug 2024

Society’s next Vice President is longtime participant in SPIE conferences, publications, and outreach.

Top row, from left to right: Cather Simpson, Jim McNally, Alexis Vogt. Bottom row, from left to right: Debbie Gustafson, Brian Pogue, Kishan Dholakia.

Prof. Cather Simpson, of the University of Auckland and Orbis Diagnostics, New Zealand, has been elected to serve as the 2025 Vice President of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. She will serve as President-Elect in 2026, and as the Society's President in 2027.

The 2024 SPIE President Jennifer Barton, director of the BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona, made the announcement along with other SPIE election results at this year’s Annual General Meeting of the Society on 20 August, during SPIE Optics + Photonics. Terms begin on 1 January 2025.

Simpson, a professor of physics and chemical sciences at the University of Auckland, is also the founder, CEO, and director of Orbis Diagnostics, a microfluidic blood-test platform. Since 2022, she has served on Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s Board of Directors.

Professional recognition

She has received multiple professional recognitions, including the Australian and New Zealand Optical Society’s W.H. (Beattie) Steel Medal; the Pickering Medal from the Royal Society Te Apārangi (New Zealand), a society of which she is a Fellow; and an Ako Aotearoa Award for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching. Simpson is also an inventor on more than ten patent families.

Simpson was named an SPIE Fellow Member last year; she is also an SPIE Lifetime Member. She served on the SPIE Board of Directors from 2021-2023; as co-chair of the SPIE Micro + Nano Materials, Devices, and Applications conference in 2019; as a frequent judge for the SPIE Prism Awards, Catalyst Awards, and the SPIE Startup Challenge; as a member of the SPIE Education Committee (2019-2020), and of the SPIE Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee (2021-2022) .

She currently chairs the SPIE Publications Committee, and sits on the SPIE Strategic Planning Committee. In 2018, she was featured in the SPIE Women in Optics planner; that same year, Simpson and Orbis Diagnostics won third place in the SPIE Startup Challenge.

“The 21st Century belongs to photonics in the same way that electronics underpinned the major advances in the 20th Century,” said Simpson. “I look forward to serving the people of SPIE — our optics and photonics community — as we innovate our way to a better future.”

Alongside Simpson, Zygo Corporation’s Peter de Groot, will serve as the 2025 SPIE President while University of Rochester Professor Julie Bentley will serve as President-Elect. Jim McNally, CEO of StratTHNK Associates, was elected to serve as the 2025 SPIE Secretary/Treasurer.

New directors

The following newly elected Society Directors will serve three-year terms from 2025-2027:

• Alexis Vogt, Endowed Chair and Professor of Optics at Monroe Community College and AmeriCOM’s executive director of Workforce and Higher Education.
• Debbie Gustafson, CEO of Energetiq Technology.
• Brian Pogue, Robert Turell UWMF Professor of Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and editor-in-chief of SPIE’s Journal of Biomedical Optics.
• Kishan Dholakia, a professor and the director of the Centre of Light for Life at the University of Adelaide.

The SPIE nominating committee accepts recommendations for the election slate on an ongoing basis. Directors, who serve a three-year term, are expected to attend and participate in three board meetings each year. To make a recommendation, or for more information, email governance@spie.org.