Jannick Rolland

Jannick Rolland is the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. She is the co-founder and CTO of LighTopTech, a women-owned business founded in 2013 to create medical imaging technologies with biomimetic noninvasive imaging technology. Rolland is the Director of the Center for Freeform Optics, an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.

Originally from France, Rolland earned her undergraduate degree from the Institut D'Optique in 1984. She then moved to the United States where she completed her MS (1985) and Ph.D. (1990) degrees in optical science from the University of Arizona.

Rolland completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and served there as Research Assistant Professor and Head of the Vision Group Computer Science. Before joining the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester in 2009 she was a Professor of Optics, CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida (UCF).

• In 2019 was named The University of Arizona Alumnus of the Year for the Wyant College of Optical Sciences.
• Won the 2017 Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award from the University of Rochester.
• Awarded the David Richardson Medal in 2014 from The Optical Society for “For visionary contributions and leadership in optical design and engineering, enabling noninvasive, optical biopsy”.
• Fellow of SPIE (2008).
• Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2004 for “For contributions to image quality assessment techniques for medical imaging and for optics in virtual environments.”

• Aaron Bauer, Eric M. Schiesser & Jannick P. Rolland (2018). “Starting geometry creation and design method for freeform optics” Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 1756.
• Kevin P. Thompson, Pablo Benítez, and Jannick P. Rolland, "Freeform Optical Surfaces: Report from OSA’s First Incubator Meeting," Optics & Photonics News 23(9), 32-37 (2012).

In 2016, Jannick collaborated with the OSA Foundation to honor her late-husband, Dr. Kevin P. Thompson (Group Director, Research and Development/Optics at Synopsys, Inc.) by endowing the Kevin P. Thompson Optical Design Innovator Award. This award is given annually to inspire the next generation of innovators by recognizing significant contributions in lens design, optical engineering, or metrology by an individual researcher at an early stage of their career.