SPIE Elects Cather Simpson into Presidential Chain

Cather Simpson, of the University of Auckland and Orbis Diagnostics, has been elected to serve as the 2025 vice president of SPIE. With her election, Simpson joins the SPIE presidential chain and will serve as president-elect in 2026 and as the society's president in 2027.

SPIE 2024 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 Aug. 20, during SPIE Optics + Photonics. Terms begin on Jan. 1, 2025.

(Top row, from left) Cather Simpson, Jim McNally, and Alexis Vogt. (Bottom row, from left) Debbie Gustafson, Brian Pogue, and Kishan Dholakia. Courtesy of SPIE.

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. 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 Aparangi (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 to 2023. She has been a frequent judge for the SPIE Prism Awards, Catalyst Awards, and the SPIE Startup Challenge, and has served on the Education Committee and the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee. 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.

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.

The following newly elected Society Directors will serve three-year terms from 2025 to 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; and Kishan Dholakia, a professor and the director of the Centre of Light for Life at the University of Adelaide.