Hello OSSC Members and Friends,
Welcome to the OSSC May Newsletter. I hope you can attend our May meeting at the Raffi’s Catering and Banquet in Pasadena to enjoy the friendship of your fellow OSSC members and other guests. While we have had events here several times over the past few years, this event will be headlined by my friend Virginia "Ginny" Ford, Director of Engineering, Eidetic Optical Systems in Valencia, CA. Ginny will tell us about her 47 year journey as a Optomechanical Engineer with most of her career at JPL with an eight term working on the Thirty Meter Telescope. For the past 3 years she has worked with her husband Eric and their son Patrick at Eidetic, which Eric founded about 30 years ago.
Ginny’s talk is a prelude to our June Annual Business meeting where we will have a panel of past OSSC presidents including Eric Ford (1992-1993), Susan Rico (1996-1997) and Reddy Chirra (2001-2002) (and maybe 1 or 2 more!!). Scott Rowe (Pres. 2011-2012) OSSC Historian will moderate the discussion. We hope to leave time for “Open Mic” where members of the audience can talk about their history with the OSSC. We will ask you for your comments and histories in writing so we can publish them in our newsletter and keep them for our History Project.
There are details about the History and Formation of the OSSC on our website at: History and Formation. Our OSSC History Project webpage has more information and a new Submission Form where OSSC members can upload their stories, documents and photos for both the History Project and to be included in the June meeting.
Another small but important part of our History Celebration is on new 75 year logo which can be seen on the History and Formation webpage. Our Website & Communications Committee will determine how to best use this new logo now and into the future.
Moving into the future, on May 20th I will give a talk titled, “Quantum 2.0: Computing, Communications, Sensors & Workforce Development” for the Orange County Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery at the Knobbe Marten’s office building. This will also be livestreamed over Zoom and recorded for those who are interested but cannot attend in-person. And the two days prior to that I and many others will attend a Quantum San Diego event at UCSD. Some (33) tickets (no cost) are still available as I write this article here.
A couple more future topics to mention, before Ginny begins her talk on Wednesday, we will ask for any final nominations for our officer elections. We currently have active OSSC members nominated for President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer and Councilor positions and you can nominate yourself or another OSSC member before we officially close the nominations. Then the online voting setup will be completed and opened for members to vote. We always look forward to having many members include themselves in this voting process, so we can serve our membership better each year.
And finally, we continue to promote internships, apprenticeships and mentorships where our more seasoned members can help our younger people learn about our industry by participating in one of these ‘ships’. To that end, the OSSC will have three summer interns from the Samueli Academy High School to help us reach out to local college and university STEM department and students clubs, current and potential OSSC corporate members, and help us with the OSSC website, newsletter and other social media communications. If you would like to help in these efforts, please contact one of the OSSC officers or staff at Vital Link and / or DIAG USA.
Wishing You Well on your Optics Journey, and Hoping to see you soon at an OSSC meeting or event,
Donn Silberman
OSSC President 2025-2026