BELLINGHAM, WA, USA — 15 February 2018 — SPIE will promote 73 new Fellows of the Society this year, to recognize the significant scientific and technical contributions of each in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. SPIE Fellows are honored for their technical achievements and for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE in particular. More than 1,300 SPIE members have become Fellows since the Society’s inception in 1955.
The annual recognition of Fellows provides an opportunity for SPIE to acknowledge Members for their outstanding technical contributions and service to SPIE.
Kara Peters, North Carolina State University, United States, for achievements in fiber optic sensors and smart structures. Peters is recognized internationally as a leading researcher on the use of embedded optical fiber sensors, in particular, fiber Bragg gratings, for the real-time and in-situ monitoring of composites. Through her research, she and her colleagues have made significant contributions to understanding the curing, mechanical, impact-resistance, and thermal properties and behavior of composite materials and composite-made structural elements. Her research has had direct benefits in society through innovations and advancements of composite technology for aerospace, defense, and automotive applications.
She has given significant service to the optics community, serving as an associate editor and guest editor of multiple journals. She leads the selection process for an annual best paper award in the journal Measurement Science and Technology. She has served as a reviewer for many journals in the field of optics and optical measurement techniques. She also has been a member of technical committees for ASME and OSA conferences.
Peters has been very active with SPIE, primarily through the Smart Structures and Material/NDE Symposium. She has served in multiple roles for the symposium, including chair or co-chair of multiple conferences. She also served as a member of the organizing committee for the Optical Fiber Sensors Conference (OFS) 25 Committee in 2017. For the 2018 OFS Conference, she will be a member of the organizing and technical committees.
She has received many honors and awards. Among them are the MAE Department Research Award, the NCSU College of Engineering Blessing Advising Award, the ANCRISST Young Researcher Award, and the Ivor K. McIvor Award for Applied Mechanics.
SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The Society serves more than 235,000 constituents from approximately 155 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional growth, and patent precedent.