Dr. Greanya’s insights into multidisciplinary science and technology have developed over a decade of experience with high-risk, high-potential impact science.
As a leader in the field of biophotonics, she represented the DOD Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) on the White House National Science and Technology Council’s Fast-Track Action Committee on Optics and Photonics (FTAC-OP). Over the course of its 120-day charter, the FTAC-OP invited subject matter experts from government, academia, and industry to look forward to the next decade of technology development and identify areas of basic and early applied research that will be important for advancing optics and photonics research and applications.
REPORTS
Building a Brighter Future with Optics and Photonics, Viktoria Greanya, PhD, April 2014
National Science and Technology Council Fast-Track Action Committee on Optics and Photonics (FTAC-OP)
The following is excerpted from her book, Bioinspired Photonics: Optical Structures and Systems Inspired by Nature.
Bioinspired Photonics is a field of rapidly advancing technology with great potential. Applications range from compact, low-cost and low power consumption products such as displays and imagers, to light-weight, energy efficient, and environmentally safe energy-harvesting technologies to advances in nanomedicine, neuroscience, and biomedical imaging.
Developing the understanding of how nature’s photonic systems work and applying that understanding to device design requires expertise in diverse fields such as entomology, zoology, biology, neuroscience, photonics, physics, chemistry, microbiology, engineering, and more. It is a truly multidisciplinary field.
It is no secret that research in multidisciplinary science and technology has tremendous potential for seeding our new technology development. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DOD), the major sources for funding of basic research in the United States, all place a high priority on multidisciplinary S&T. Research at the interfaces between fields requires innovative thinking to achieve major technology breakthroughs by the fusion of different disciplines.
Viktoria Greanya, PhD
Author of Bioinspired Photonics; Optical Structures and Systems Inspired by Nature
Available now at CRC Press or Amazon.com.