Mentorship has been really important at almost every stage of my career, from my undergraduate thesis advisor to my PhD advisor and my managers at Meta.
None of those mentors were women, though they were all strong allies and champions of diversity and inclusion. We should all work towards a common goal of increasing the representation of women and other underrepresented groups in the field of optics. If we take a chance on ourselves and practice allyship, we can work together to increase this representation. I am thrilled to partner with Meta and SPIE to support valuable mentorship programming that reduces barriers and bridges gaps to collectively achieve this goal.
I am very fortunate to have several family members, male and female, who pursued careers in STEM fields. An undergraduate major in physics and a PhD in optical sciences seemed like a very normal thing to do—I never felt that my major or career path were in any way special or abnormal.
I landed in the field of optics completely by accident! For my undergraduate thesis, I built a diode laser, which helped me land a junior level position at Spectra-Physics Lasers after graduation. I realized pretty quickly that I needed to improve my technical depth, so I applied to the Optical Sciences program at the University of Arizona.
Soon after starting there, I joined the Polarization Lab as a researcher. I began as a master’s student, but I was so fascinated by polarization optics that I quickly converted to a PhD track.
When I first joined Meta, I was hired as an optical systems engineer by an amazing manager who embedded me with his team in order to support a technology transfer effort from research to product. That was one of the most rewarding and fun experiences of my career.
Since then, I have built a small, specialized team that focuses on the design and simulation of polarization-based optical systems for virtual reality products, and I am the technical lead manager for polarization design. I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to work on such interesting technical problems with such exceptional colleagues, and to support my amazing team members.
Navigating motherhood while continuing to lean into my career and maintain a sense of self is probably my biggest challenge. I have two wonderful young children, so every minute of the workday has to be as efficient as possible. I’ve learned to ruthlessly prioritize, and that it’s ok not to open up my computer for two (or more) hours every evening. It’s really easy to push ourselves too hard when we care so much about what we do.
Hannah Noble
Technical Lead Manager, Polarization Design, Meta
Born in United States / Resides in United States
Educational Background: BA in Physics, Reed College; PhD in Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, United States
