We are delighted to announce that Carmen Menoni of Colorado State University, has been chosen as the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Service Award.
For pioneering and sustained contributions to publications, conferences and leadership to the Photonics Society and IEEE broadly.
Carmen Menoni is a University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She received her B.S. in physics from the University of Rosario and Ph.D. in physics from Colorado State University. Menoni’s work sits at the intersection of materials science and precision photonics. Her research on amorphous dielectrics have advanced the understanding of the glass network structure that governs mechanical loss and optical properties in amorphous thin films. This fundamental research has been pivotal to the engineering of most demanding dielectric coatings with the potential to increase sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors (LIGO) by almost a factor of 2.
Her contributions to the understanding of how to engineer sputtered amorphous thin films at the atomic scale have been instrumental for advancing dielectric coatings for ultra-high intensity and ultra-high energy lasers which are driving the frontiers of high intensity science and inertial fusion.
Her scientific accomplishments extend beyond high performance laser coatings. Menoni co-pioneered table-top extreme ultraviolet laser microscopy, breaking the resolution barrier for lab-scale imaging and earning an R&D 100 Award — the “Oscars of invention” — for the EUVM-1 microscope. She is the inventor of EUV laser ablation mass spectrometry, a technique that maps chemical and isotopic composition in three dimensions at the nanoscale. This tool has found applications ranging from nuclear forensics to biological imaging at the sub-cellular level.
Her technical contributions are recognized by prestigious awards. In 2026 she received the SPIE Maria Goeppert Mayer Award in Photonics. In 2024 she received both the OPTICA Joseph Fraunhofer/Robert M. Burley Prize and the Willis Lamb Award for Laser Science. In 2023 she received the IEEE IEEE Photonics Society Women in Photonics Excellence Award. Her multiple contributions to service to the Photonics community have earned her the 2026 IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Service Award. Menoni is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Optica, the American Physical Society (APS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and SPIE.
Carmen Menoni has been in important leadership roles. From 2020-2021 she served as President of the IEEE Photonics Society, leading the Society through one of the most challenging times in which most activities had to be re-programmed due to the Covid pandemic. In her role of Vice-President of Publications she spearheaded the creation of the IEEE Photonics Journal, the first online journal of IEEE. Menoni has also had extensive participation in prominent editorial and governing boards.
Menoni is Director of one of three US Inertial Fusion Energy hubs, RISE – a partnership between five universities, three national and federal labs, and four industrial members – that provides the framework to accelerate inertial fusion energy technologies and train the workforce that will support the transition of inertial fusion to commercialization.
Menoni is co-founder and president of XUV Lasers, a spin-off from CSU that commercializes laser technologies
(www.xuvlasers.com).
