Roberta Ramponi, director of Italy’s Instituto di Fotonica e Nanotechnolgie, has been elected as the new president of the International Commission for Optics (ICO), the international body representing the global optics and photonics community.

Ramponi also chairs the Photonics21 work group dedicated to photonics research, education and training and is currently one of ICO’s 15 different vice presidents.

She succeeds the current president, Yasuhiko Arakawa, director of the Center for Photonic and Electronic Convergence at the University of Tokyo, and begins her three-year presidential term in October.

Aside from the ICO and Photonics21 roles, president-elect Ramponi has previously served a term as president of the European Optical Society, and is the scientific chair of the Italian national technology platform entitled “light sources and photonic sensors.”

Having initially worked on the development of laser-based instrumentation for biomedicine, mainly for diagnostic applications, she has since focused on nonlinear and integrated optics, and related applications — including the fabrication and characterization of waveguides in nonlinear crystals and passive and active glasses.

Most recently, Ramponi has been involved in the design and realization of integrated micro-optofluidic devices, by means of direct writing with femtosecond laser pulses for the fabrication of optical waveguides — including the fabrication of integrated optical chips for applications in quantum communications.