Lifetime Achievement Award
Jannick Rolland receives 2025 Hajim School Lifetime Achievement Award
Jannick Rolland, the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering, is receiving the Hajim School’s top annual faculty award for her research, international leadership, and mentoring of graduate students. The Hajim School presented Rolland with the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes faculty for outstanding achievements in research, teaching, and leadership over the course of their career.
“For pioneering accomplishments in freeform optics and for her mentoring of generations of graduate students, she is well deserving of a Hajim Lifetime Achievement Award,” says Thomas Brown, the director of the Institute of Optics.
In scholarly activity, Rolland has published 16 book chapters and more than 225 peer-reviewed publications related to optical design with a focus on head-worn displays, vision, augmented reality and 3D visualization, biophotonics technology innovation and development related to optical coherence tomography, and image quality assessment for medical and biomedical imaging.
Rolland is the founder and director of the Center for Freeform Optics, a consortium that led the way to what has become a revolution in optical design. She holds more than 70 patents and is considered a pioneer in optical applications for augmented and virtual reality. Her recent accolades include the 2025 SPIE A. E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering, induction into Augmented World Expo’s inaugural class of the XR Hall of Fame in 2024, and being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in 2020, a program that highlights academic inventors whose work has made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.
Since joining the University of Rochester faculty in 2009, Rolland has mentored 28 PhD students and 11 MS students. With her former PhD student Cristina Canavesi, Rolland was cofounder and chief technology officer of LightopTech, a startup commercializing one of Rolland’s inventions. The portable device uses a microscope with a liquid lens to image cells just below the surface of the skin, cornea, and other tissues.
Rolland’s reach at the University extends far, as she also directs the University’s Robert E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design & Engineering and has joint appointments with the Center for Visual Science and Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Wendi Heinzelman, dean of the Hajim School, notes, “Jannick is a world-renowned researcher, a leader and a visionary who translates her research into practical technologies that have transformed optical systems. We are extremely lucky to have her as a colleague in the Hajim School.”