Carmen S. Menoni

Carmen S. Menoni is an Argentine-American physicist who is the University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. Her research considers oxide materials for interference coatings and spectrometry imaging. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Physical Society, Optica, and SPIE. Menoni served as the President of the IEEE Photonics Society from 2020 to 2021.

Early life and education Menoni is from Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. She became interested in mathematics and physics as a young girl.

Research and career In 1991, Menoni joined the faculty at Colorado State University as a teaching assistant. She led the National Science Foundation centre for Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Science and Technology with her husband, Jorge Rocca. At Colorado State Menoni investigated the physics of semiconductors and optically active materials. In the 1990s, Menoni established XUV Lasers, a spin-out company that sought to commercialize her innovations in laser science.

Menoni studied multi-layer oxide materials that can act as anti-reflective coatings for high power lasers. In 2008, she developed a table-top microscope that uses extreme ultraviolet lasers and sophisticated lasers to image nanoscale objects. The laser pulse, which had around a nanosecond duration, could image structures with a spatial resolution of ≈ 0.05 μm. She produces the anti-reflection coatings through ion beam sputtering.

Awards and honors 2008 R&D 100 Award 2009 Elected Fellow of Optica 2009 Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society 2009 SPIE Women in Optics Planner 2016 Colorado State University Distinguished Alumni Employee 2020 Elected President of the IEEE Photonics Society 2024 Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize

Selected publications

Personal life Menoni met her husband, laser physicist , as an undergraduate student at the National University of Rosario.