The 2024 election results were announced at the Optica Annual Business Meeting, held during the Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science Conference.

Turan Erdogan currently serves as the president of Plymouth Grating Laboratory, Inc. (PGL) in Carver, Massachusetts, the leading commercial supplier of diffraction gratings for pulse compression of ultrahigh-intensity lasers for high-energy-laser and spectral-beam combining, as well as laser applications. He was elected as 2025 vice president of Optica.

“Turan is an accomplished leader. From his significant volunteer service with Optica, to his time on the faculty of the University of Rochester, and his corporate leadership at Melles Griot, IDEX, and PGL, he has shown an incredible ability to effectively work with both academia and industry while simultaneously supporting the optics and photonics community,” said Elizabeth Nolan, interim CEO of Optica. “We are excited to welcome Turan to the Optica board of directors.”

Christine P. Hendon of Columbia University was elected as the 2025–2027 director-at-large. She is an associate professor of electrical engineering, director of the Structure Function Imaging Laboratory, and vice dean of diversity and strategic partnerships within Columbia’s engineering school. In her role, Hendon teaches optical systems and digital image processing to a diverse student population. Her research contributions include optical systems and methods to extract architectural information and identify structural substrates within tissue.

Christine received recognition for her work from Forbes’ 30 under 30 in Science and Healthcare, MIT Technology Review’s 35 under 35 Innovators, the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF Career Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering.