New FIP Executive Members

The FIP is pleased to welcome its new three FIP Executive Members in 2020.

Thank you for joining the community of International Physics!

Anne Matsuura is the Director of Quantum & Molecular Technologies at Intel Labs in Portland, Oregon (USA), where she leads research teams in quantum algorithms and architecture and in innovative sensing technologies. She left her position as the Chief Scientist of the Optical Society (OSA) to come to Intel in 2014. Previously, she worked in Belgium as the Chief Executive of the European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility (ETSF), an organization of 250 scientists throughout Europe providing scientific collaborations, modeling and simulation, and open-source software to the public and private sectors. Prior to the ETSF, Anne held positions as a senior scientist at a strategic investment firm (In-Q-Tel), as a program manager for atomic and molecular physics at the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and as a special assistant to the U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Laboratories and Basic Science. She has also been a researcher at Lund University in Sweden, Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, and was an adjunct professor in the physics department at Boston University. Dr. Matsuura was a Fulbright Scholar at Nagoya University (Japan), a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellow at Tokyo University, and was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Fellow. She has published over 35 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has 7 patents pending. She is an active APS volunteer. Her term as a member of the APS Committee on Careers & Professional Development is ending this year, and she is an industry mentor in the APS IMPact Program. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford University.

Joseph Niemela has served as a Research Scientist at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, since 2003. He is presently consulting on ICTP’s international programs, having for many years headed the ICTP Office of External Activities (OEA), its Training and Research in Italian Laboratories (TRIL) program, and its Applied Physics group. He conducts a research program in fluid turbulence with over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and also coordinates optics and photonics activities at ICTP, providing research stays for experimentalists from developing countries in close collaboration with nearby institutions in Italy and Slovenia.

Along with his research, he serves as Chair of the Physics for Development Group of the European Physical Society (EPS), Secretary of Commission 13: Physics for Development, of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), Treasurer of the International Commission for Optics (ICO), and was the ICTP observer on the Council of the Synchrotron Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) project.

He was elected a Fellow of the APS for his contributions to classical and quantum turbulence research, and was awarded the APS Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach, in recognition of his ”outstanding leadership of the International Year of Light (2015) and for optical science and engineering outreach on a global scale." He also received the Galileo Galilei Silver Medal by the Italian Physical Society (SIF) and shared the SPIE Educator of the Year award in 2011 as Director of a UNESCO program for training physics teachers in developing countries (ALOP).

Vasudevan (Vengu) Lakshminarayanan is a professor of vision science, physics, electrical and computer engineering and systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo. He was a "KITP Scholar" at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and has held research and teaching and visiting professorship positions at UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan ,the University of Missouri, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi amongst others. He is also an adjunct professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ryerson University, Toronto. He also served on both of UNESCO’s International Year of Light and International Day of Light planning/advisory committees and is , a founding member of the UNESCO Active Learning in Optics and Photonics Program . He is on the optics advisory board of the International Center for Theoretical Physics at Trieste, Italy, a consultant to the medical devices group of the FDA (since 2011), has represented the United States at two IUPAP general assemblies, was chair of the US advisory/liason committee for the International Commission on Optics, a finalist of AAAS Science and technology policy fellowship , a director of the Optical Society of America, the Strategic planning committee of the SPIE -International Society for Optics and Photonics, etc. He is a fellow of APS, , AAAS, OSA, , SPIE, IoP amongst others. At APS he was chair of CISA and has been on the Public Policy Committee as well as the CIFS. He has published widely in a number of areas and is the co-author/co-editor of over 20 books. His awards include: the SPIE Optics educator award (2011) and the Esther Beller Hoffman medal of OSA (2013). He has been/or is technical editor/associate editor for a number of journals and serves on a number of NIH study sections as well as other international funding agencies