Jess Wade: The 2025 SPIE Directors’ Award

Jess Wade is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College London, where her research covers new materials for optoelectronic, spintronic, and quantum devices, with a particular focus on chiral molecular materials. But Wade’s impact reaches far beyond her scientific achievements: she is a consistently active advocate for enhanced diversity across science. A few examples include leading the creation of Wikipedia pages for women scientists – as well as other historically underrepresented groups in science – to showcase their achievements and get their names into the public domain (Wade-written Wikipedia pages now number in the thousands). And Wade takes that show on the road, heading up Wiki Edit-A-Thons to encourage others to contribute to the online encyclopedia. She campaigned fiercely for Inferior, Angela Saini's 2017 book addressing sexism in science, fundraising tirelessly to get it into every school in the UK, US, and Canada. In her spare time, she makes frequent appearances as a speaker on STEM and STEM diversity. In 2021, she published a children’s nonfiction book on materials and nanoscience, Nano: The Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small.

An SPIE Senior Member and the inaugural winner of the SPIE Diversity Outreach Award in 2020, Wade is already the recipient of many awards and recognitions for her work in science as well as her advocacy efforts. In 2015, she was awarded the Institute of Physics’ Early Career Physics Communicator Prize and an Imperial College Union Award for contribution to college life. The next year, Wade received the Institute of Physics’ Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize. In 2017, she won the Robert Perrin Award from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and Imperial College’s Julia Higgins Medal in recognition of her work to support gender equality. In 2018, Wade won the Daphne Jackson Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics for “acting as an internationally recognized ambassador for STEM.” That same year, she was named as one of Nature magazine’s 10 people who mattered in science. In 2019, Wade was awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to gender diversity in science. Imperial College London also honored her that year with its Leadership Award for Societal Engagement. Wade was featured in the 2018 SPIE Women in Optics publication, is a frequent presenter at SPIE special events that focus on outreach, communication, and community, and currently chairs the SPIE Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee.

“Although still a comparatively early career researcher, Jess has already published groundbreaking work in light-matter interactions, specifically around the role played by chirality and materials relevant to the next generation of solar cells, many of which will be based on polymers,” says Royal Society Research Professor and Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow Miles Padgett, who also sits on the 2025 SPIE Board of Directors. “Her research excellence has been recognized both by her host institution, Imperial College London, and the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy. Imperial has already appointed her to a tenured position, but, more significantly, the Royal Society has award her a university research fellowship, the most prestigious and competitive award of its type in the UK, highlighting her as one of the brightest minds of her generation. But Jess is more than just a leading researcher, she has a global reputation for her public-engagement work in STEM and her championing of women in physics as well as tackling systemic biases such as gender and racial bias. Jess Wade has already made massive contributions to EDI and related agendas, and I’m sure she is on the road to even bigger contributions. This recognition on behalf of SPIE is simply an acknowledgement for all she has achieved so far: I have no doubt we’ll see even more from Jess Wade in the future.”

Meet the other 2025 SPIE Society Award recipients.

Read more about Jessica Wade and the SPIE Directors’ Award.