Personal information
Biography
Maria S. Millán is BSc, MSc in Physics from the University of Valencia and PhD (1990) in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. She has been teaching at the Polytechnical University of Catalonia)-BarcelonaTECH (UPC) since 1984 and became Director of the Department of Optics and Optometry (2000-2003). She is Full Professor, Chair of Optics, since 2008. Principal investigator of the Group of Research on Applied Optics and Image Processing (GOAPI, http://futur.upc.edu/GOAPI), composed regularly by 10 senior members on average and PhD, MSc, exchange students, postdoc and visiting professors not inferior to 10 people annually, many of them from Latin-American countries. The group has consolidated excellence as credited by public research agencies since 2009 with no discontinuation. She created and chaired the Network on Optical Image Processing (6 European partners, 1994-2005). Maria S. Millán has made outstanding contributions to information optics, with substantial advancement of image processing applications to pattern recognition,
programmable components, optical security, textile industrial inspection, visual optics and ophthalmology. Her pioneering achievements in the application of optical and digital image techniques have been transferred to the industry and the clinical
practice. She has authored over 200 publications and 5 patents, supervised 12 (plus 3 in progress) PhD and 31 MSc theses and given over 35 invited talks at international conferences. Maria S. Millán has been the principal investigator of public grants and private research projects (overall 4,5 million Euro funding). She has performed sustained leadership and service to the optics community, particularly of Latin-American countries. She has served the International Commission for Optics (ICO), the Optical Society-OSA, SPIE, the Spanish Optical Society-SEDOPTICA, the Red Iberomericana de Óptica (RIAO), the European Optical Society (EOS), and the Red Colombiana de Óptica (RCO) at various positions for over 20 years. She has
done and promoted outreach activity regularly, more intense concerning the International Day of Light. Distinctions and honours include SPIE Fellow, EOS Fellow, OSA Senior and Fellow, City of Barcelona Prize, and Scholar Fellow of the Colombian Academy of Mathematics, Physical and Natural Sciences. President of the Spanish Society of Optics, 2020-2023.