As a woman in STEM working in a heavily male-dominated environment, I will present a brief summary of my career to date, including the difficulties that I have overcome, and opportunities that I have been able to seize over the past 25 years since I graduated as an optical engineer in France. My personal and professional journey has taken me through Hawaii and Chile before I moved to Australia and joined the ANU in 2012. Through personal experience and my involvement in various Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access bodies at the ANU, in Australia, and in the international astronomical and space instrumentation community, I have gained an up close and personal as well as a professional appreciation of what it takes for a woman to succeed in STEM fields. I will happily take and answer any questions about my journey and any other topics that you would like to explore. I will keep my talk short on purpose so that we can exchange in an informal and safe space afterwards. Feel free to send any questions that you may have to the talk organisers in advance so I can make sure to address those during the discussion as well. I am looking forward to talking to as many of you as possible!

Professor Céline d’Orgeville joined the ANU RSAA in 2012 to lead Laser Guide Star (LGS) activities undertaken on Mt Stromlo. An ANU Translational Fellow since 2018, she aims to transfer her guidestar laser and adaptive optics research into the commercial world of space situational awareness and ground-to-space laser communications. Before ANU, Céline worked at the Gemini Observatory where she initiated and led the multi-million dollar Gemini laser program, including the design, fabrication and commissioning of the Gemini North and South LGS facilities in Hawaii (1999- 2006) and Chile (2007-2011). The Gemini South Multi-Conjugate AO system, GeMS, uses five sodium LGS to probe the atmospheric turbulence above the Gemini South 8-meter telescope. Céline’s GeMS LGS Facility has held the record for most sodium guide stars in a LGS asterism since its commissioning in 2011.

Prof. d’Orgeville is a Fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and a Fellow of the Astronomical Society of Australia. She was the inaugural chair of the RSAA Access and Equity Committee created in 2013. With Prof. Brian Schmidt she co-chaired the 2014 edition of the Women in Astronomy workshop. She has been a steering committee member of the Astronomical Society of Australia Women in Astronomy (WiA) Chapter, which broadened its remit to become the Inclusion Diversity Equity in Astronomy (IDEA) Chapter in 2016. Céline is also an ANU Ally and a member of the ANU Gender Institute (GI) management committee. She has received the 2020 ANU College of Science Award for Service in the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) category, and is the 2021 winner of the SPIE Diversity Outreach Award. Céline is a proud alumna of the 2019 WATTLE (Women ATTaining LEadership) program.

Join the Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 826 6940 1563
Password: 412 816