Katie Schwertz: The 2024 SPIE President’s Award
Katie Schwertz, senior engineering manager at Edmund Optics, received her BS in Optics from the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics and her MS in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona. For Edmund Optics, where she has been employed since 2010, she has also worked as an optomechanical engineer, an optical research engineer, and a senior design engineer, working on projects that have encompassed night vision eyepieces and infrared optics as well as executing and iterating optical subsystem designs, tolerancing, analyses, and prototype evaluations in compressed timeframes for both internal development and external customers.
An SPIE Senior Member, Schwertz has presented her work at multiple conferences and is a twice-published author with SPIE Press (Photonics Rules of Thumb and Field Guide to Optomechanical Design and Analysis). She has served on conference program committees (Optomechanics and Optical Alignment; Optomechanical Engineering), on the Nominating and Leadership Development Committee, and on the SPIE Board of Directors. Schwertz also served on the SPIE Education Committee and a SPIE Gender Equity Task Force that was established in 2015 to identify how the professional environment and culture of the community can better enable equal opportunities, rewards, and recognition for its members, independent of gender.
Schwertz has also been featured in the 2015 SPIE Women in Optics publication. "When I think back to high school,” she said at that time, “even though I really enjoyed math and science, I thought I never wanted to be an engineer or scientist because I had this stereotypical picture in my head of being isolated in a lab with a computer, working by myself; and I knew I wanted to be more involved with people. So much of any job is being able to communicate and collaborate with others — engineering and science are no exception."
“Katie is tireless in sharing her excitement for optics and encouraging young people, especially women, to enter the field,” notes 2024 SPIE President Jennifer Kehlet Barton, who is also the director of the BIO5 Institute and the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona. “Her confident and down-to-earth explanations of the power of optics are well-received across women in optics groups, K-12 outreach activities, the Tucson Optics Valley industry cluster events, in diversity activities at SPIE events, and even on NBC News. She’s an outstanding contributor to SPIE and the broader optics field, highly regarded by her peers, and very well-deserving of this recognition.”
Meet the other 2024 SPIE Society Award recipients.
Read more about Katie Schwertz and the SPIE President’s Award.
