SPIE Elects Rochester’s Julie Bentley into Presidential Chain

University of Rochester professor Julie Bentley has been elected to serve as the 2024 vice president of SPIE. With her election, Bentley joins the SPIE presidential chain and will serve as president-elect in 2025 and as the society’s president in 2026.

SPIE 2023 President Bernard Kress, director of XR hardware at Google, made the announcement along with other SPIE election results at this year’s annual general meeting of the society on Aug. 22 during SPIE Optics + Photonics. Terms begin on Jan. 1, 2024.

Top row, left to right: Julie Bentley, Jim McNally, Samuel Achilefu. Bottom row, left to right: Agnes Huebscher, Daewook Kim, Michelle Stock. Courtesy of SPIE

Bentley is a professor at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics and is the 2022 recipient of the university’s Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award, as well as a 2014 recipient of the university’s Goergen Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 2019, she received the RRPC Education Award from the Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster. She is also a private consultant and holds four patents in optical design and engineering.

Bentley has been an SPIE fellow member since 2012 and served on the SPIE board of directors from 2014 to 2017. She has served on the Scholarship, IT, Education, Awards, and Publications committees; has chaired the Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award; and has co-authored two books for SPIE Press, Field Guide to Lens Design and Designing Optics Using CODE V. In 2010, she was featured in the SPIE Women in Optics planner, and, in 2022, Bentley received the SPIE Directors’ Award, one of the society’s highest honors.

Alongside Bentley, Jennifer Barton, director of the BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona, will serve as the 2024 SPIE president while Zygo’s Peter De Groot will serve as president-elect.

Jim McNally, CEO of StratTHNK Associates, was elected to serve as the 2024 SPIE secretary/treasurer.

The following newly elected society directors will serve three-year terms from 2024 to 2026: Samuel Achilefu, professor and chair of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s department of biomedical engineering; Agnes Huebscher, Edmund Optics’ senior director of global strategic marketing; Daewook Kim, associate professor at the University of Arizona’s Wyant College of Optical Sciences; and Michelle Stock, TracInnovations’ director of business development and sales, North America.