Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering

Carmen Menoni, University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and President of IEEE Photonics Society

Contact

Office: B325 Engineering Research Center
Phone: 970-491-8659
Email: carmen.menoni@colostate.edu

Dr. Carmen Menoni

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

University Distinguished Professor

Bio

Carmen Menoni is a University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering who holds appointments in the Department of Chemistry and School of Biomedical Engineering. She received her B.S. in physics from the University of Rosario and Ph.D. in physics from Colorado State University. 

As an expert in laser technologies, Menoni’s research investigates transparent dielectric materials that advance the state-of-art in interference coatings for ultra-high intensity lasers with applications to inertial fusion energy and for gravitational wave detectors. 

Menoni serves as director of the Inertial Fusion Energy hub, RISE, supported by the DoE IFE STAR Program, Fusion Energy Science.  The RISE hub – a partnership between five universities, three national and federal labs, and three industrial members – provides the framework to accelerate inertial fusion energy technologies and train the workforce that will support a laser fusion demonstrator.  

Menoni is the 2024 recipient of the Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, Willis Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics (2024), and IEEE Women in Photonics Excellence Award (2023). 

She is Fellow of Optica, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and SPIE. 

Menoni has served the optics and photonics community through her participation in prominent editorial and governing boards. She was President of the IEEE Photonics Society in 2020-2021. Menoni is co-founder and president of XUV Lasers, a spin-off from CSU that commercializes laser technologies.

Education

  • B.S. 1978 University of Rosario in Physics
  • Ph.D 1987 Colorado State University in Physics

Research Interests

  • Extreme ultraviolet/soft x-Ray photonics
  • Nano-microscopy and nano-spectrometry
  • Ion beam sputtering
  • Optical interference coatings