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Prof. Jie Qiao Named a Fellow of The Laser InstituteThe Laser Institute (LIA) has elected Prof. Jie Qiao, Ph.D., of Rochester Institute of Technology as a Fellow of the Institute. - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ORLANDO, Fla., September 15, 2026 — The Laser Institute (LIA) has elected Prof. Jie Qiao, Ph.D., of Rochester Institute of Technology as a Fellow of the Institute. Fellow is the highest grade of LIA membership, awarded to members who have exceptional unusual professional distinction in the Institute's mission areas and who have provided outstanding service to their field. The designation will be conferred at the LIA Awards Ceremony during the 45th annual ICALEO in Denver, Colorado. Qiao is an Associate Professor at the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at RIT, where her research spans ultrafast laser science, precision optical fabrication, and integrated photonics. She conceived and demonstrated the interferometric grating-phasing technique behind the first coherently phased 1.5-meter tiled diffraction grating compressor, work that removed a fundamental aperture-scaling barrier in high-energy chirped-pulse amplification and enabled kilojoule-picosecond operation of the OMEGA EP laser at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The approach has since influenced the architecture of large-scale ultrafast laser facilities internationally. At RIT, Qiao has pioneered deterministic ultrafast-laser precision fabrication of freeform optics, including simultaneous laser figuring and polishing with nanometer-scale surface quality and mid-spatial-frequency error correction. She has also advanced 3D integrated photonics through the first monolithic frequency-converted waveguide laser fabricated across dissimilar materials using ultrafast-laser inscription. She holds four U.S. patents and co-founded Aktiwave LLC to translate ultrafast-laser fabrication technologies toward industrial applications. She has authored more than 150 journal and conference publications and delivered over 80 invited presentations. Qiao is an Optica Fellow and Fulbright U.S. Scholar whose professional leadership spans the societies that convene the laser community, including leading the technical programs of several of the field’s principal meetings. She served as General Chair of CLEO in 2024 and 2025, Program Chair of LPM 2026, as well as Associate Editor of Optics Express. Within LIA, she is Vice Chair of ICALEO 2026 and will serve as General Chair of ICALEO 2027. She is also founder and chair of WiSTEE Connect and has organized the Global Women of Light symposia to advance women’s leadership in science and engineering.
Qiao was nominated by Prof. Yongfeng Lu of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a past president of LIA, with supporting endorsements from Dr. Koji Sugioka, Eric Mottay, and Dr. Markus Kogel-Hollacher. Save the Date - The 45th annual ICALEO, the International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics, takes place October 5 through 8, 2026, in Denver, Colorado. About The Laser Institute Contact: The Laser Institute |