On March 1st, Women of Color kicked off a month-long celebration of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) award winners. Year-round, Women of Color online celebrates the outstanding contributions of remarkable women who have received STEM awards at the annual Women of Color magazine STEM Conference. Many award winners push for success as they help increase equity and lower the barriers to success.

Aleksandra Boskovic, Ph.D., was research director for optics, surfaces, and integration technologies at Corning when she won the 2016 Women of Color Technologist of the Year award. As a leader, she set direction, delivered concepts, and provided an understanding of Corning’s businesses, including optical communications, display technologies, and specialty materials.

Corning focuses on specialty glass, ceramics, and optical physics. Optical communications offer opportunities ranging from fiber optics to quantum communications. The bottom line: optics are vital in phone conversations, Internet exploration, and the quality of images on computer and television screens.

“Optics is always going to be part of our lives,” Dr. Boskovic told Women of Color magazine in 2016. “Optics are more and more important in our lives,” said Boskovic, giving further examples of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and remote surgeries as specialties in which optics are critical. “These all have optics at their heart,” she said.

Boskovic holds numerous patents, including five that enable telecommunication systems to keep up with bandwidth growth at the speed of light. She has also been an advisor of diversity efforts at Corning and a presenter at several diversity events, including one at Stanford University.

Boskovic received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in physics and optical physics from universities in Brazil and the United Kingdom. She also earned an Executive MBA from Dartmouth College.

A significant part of her early work at Corning aimed to develop the requirements for the next generation of fibers and optical components and build their value proposition in collaboration with the commercial teams. Later, she held several technical leadership positions, including leading the optics modeling organization in research, the fiber development organization, and Corning’s European Technology Center.