Kristen Maitland, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been elected society director for SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
As a society director, Maitland will serve a three-year term to oversee the activities of the society. The board of directors acts on behalf of all SPIE members to establish policy and strategy, assure that the society bylaws are followed, and approve budgets for expenditure of resources.
Maitland’s research interests focus on the development of optical instrumentation for improved detection and diagnosis of disease, primarily cancer and bacterial infection. To improve detection of early cancer, Maitland’s lab has developed a multi-scale multi-modal optical imaging system that is being evaluated in a clinical trial. She also is developing optical sensing and imaging technologies to enable rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis.
Maitland, who also serves as director of graduate programs for the department, received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from California Polytechnic State University and her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
She is recipient of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Select Young Faculty Award, the Tenneco Meritorious Teaching Award and the Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching.
SPIE is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The society serves more than 235,000 constituents from approximately 155 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional networking and patent precedent. SPIE provided more than $3.2 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2012.