Peter de Groot, chief scientist at Zygo Corporation, has been elected to serve as the 2023 Vice President of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. With his election, Peter joins the SPIE presidential chain. He will serve as President-Elect in 2024, and as the Society’s President in 2025.
SPIE was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies, and today has a membership of 19,000 and serves 255,000 constituents from 183 countries. Peter is an SPIE Fellow with an extensive involvement with SPIE. He has served as both member and advisor to the Board of Directors, is a current member of the Financial Advisory and Strategic Planning Committees, and is chair for the Symposia committee. He has presented more than 55 papers at SPIE events, organizes conferences, and offers professional short courses in optical metrology. In 2016, Peter received the Society’s Rudolf Kingslake Medal for the most noteworthy original paper in the SPIE journal “Optical Engineering”.
Peter’s election comes at a time when Zygo has just completed a refresh of its corporate brand to better reflect its leadership position in the sectors it serves. The company has an overall vision to expand the boundaries of possibility, simplify the complex, and inspire confidence. This is achieved through a combination of values that run throughout the entire Zygo team of passionate innovators.
Peter has experience in both industrial and academic environments as a Physics PhD specializing in applied optics. He has published 200 technical papers, tutorials, and book chapters in the fields of physics, optical testing, surface structure analysis, semiconductor wafer process metrology, stage motion measurement, and large-scale coordinate measurement. His research has led to a wide range of commercial products and product enhancements, as well as 140 US patents. He joined Zygo Corporation in 1992 as Director of R&D, and together with a team of pioneers in optical metrology, photonics, and new product design, has been developing best-in-class optical metrology tools helping to drive the excellence in manufacturing across the globe.
Peter comments: “I am delighted to have been chosen to serve as the next vice president — and, eventually, president — of SPIE. There has never been a more exciting time to be in optics and photonics, nor a more challenging time for SPIE to adapt to a rapidly changing professional environment. All of us at SPIE share the vision of a more inclusive, global, effective, and sustainable home for accelerating light-based research, supporting new product development, and advancing career opportunities for both rising and established scientists and engineers. I am looking forward to working with the exceptional people on the SPIE staff and in leadership to realize the shared aspirations of our members.”
