From The President

Hello OSSC Members and Friends,

At our Annual Business Meeting in June, we once again elected officers to lead our society for the coming year and into our future. I am very grateful to have been elected as your President for a second time; the first time being in 2007!!

I am joined by Lisa Belodoff as Vice President and Steven Dang as Treasurer; both now serving their second consecutive year; and Cecily Brown as our new Secretary; the position I most recently held for two years.

We also have two of our three (3) seasoned councilors returning to serve us, Martin Hagenbuechle and Jack Latchinian, who will be joined by McGwire Herbert, who severed as a Councilor in 2023-2024. We have an excellent team other Board Members you can see at Leadership Team - Optical Society of Southern California.

The OSSC Board had an initial Summer Zoom meeting that set the stage for many opportunities to help improve our service to our members and the Southern California Optics Community at large. Some of these opportunities include operating our society more like a typical not-for-profit tax exempt organization, where we have more focus on fund raising to support our many programs including education and outreach and special events for students and the general public and our members. Looking back over the many years I have been an OSSC Member and Volunteer Leader, I see we have not kept up with inflation by not raising our membership fees for decades. So the Board will be looking seriously at increasing our membership fees at all levels and creating more sponsorship opportunities.

One very current sponsorship opportunity is with the SPIE JAM at the Optics & Photonics Conference coming up on Wednesday August 6th in San Diego. You can learn more about this event, RSVP to attend and be a Sponsor here at:

Optics For The Greater Good.

Also, if you or any of your colleagues would like to volunteer to join our Board, contact me directly, and you can also register to attend our OSSC Summer Board Dinner Meeting -Friday August 8th in Buena Park. 

Registration is required by Monday July 28th. 

Looking forward to a Wonderful OSSC year.

See you soon,

Donn Silberman 

OSSC President 2025-2026