A Career Encompassing Optical Physics, Diversity and Mentoring

The Bell Laboratories Cooperative Research Fellowship Program for Minorities (CRFP) founded in 1972, followed closely in 1974 by the Graduate Research Program for Women (GRPW) and the Summer Research Program for Minorities and Women (SRP), were among the first programs of their kind in the US to address the issue of underrepresentation of women and minorities in the STEM fields and had a particularly strong impact in Physics. In 1981, four PhDs were awarded to African-Americans in the US in Physics and two (including me) were Bell Labs CRFP Fellows. In addition to striving to produce leading edge research, these programs made me a strong proponent of the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minorities into the scientific enterprise. After 14 years in the Bell Labs Research Division and now approaching 23 years in academia (including Physics Dept. Chair at NJIT), I have had the good fortune to continue the research tradition, where the majority of my graduate students are women and underrepresented minorities. Indeed, these students are out there, hungry for the experience, motivated to give their best effort, and thrive when given supportive and nurturing environments – but you must expend the energy and resources to find them and I guarantee it will be worth it! On the professional side, I was a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Labs and had the good fortune of serving as President of the Optical Society of America (OSA) in 2002, Editor-in- Chief of Optics Letters (1995-2001), Co-Chair of the 1992 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) and Fellow of the following organizations: OSA (1991), NSBP (1992), APS (1996), AAAS (1996) and IEEE (2000).