Marija Strojnik

Marija Strojnik (Scholl), is a distinguished professor at the Optical Research Institute in Leon, Mexico. She enrolled in the Physics Department of the University of Ljubljana and continued her studies at Arizona State University (ASU). She moved to the University of Arizona, and earned her PhD in Optical Sciences, becoming the first woman with a specialization in infrared science.

Since 1994, Strojnik has been at the Optical Research Center in Leon, Mexico. Marija founded the Optical engineering group, to support industry and as an academic area at the Centro de Investigaciones en Optica (CIO) in Leon, Mexico. Her graduated doctoral students support optical industry throughout Mexico. Strojnik introduced and promoted the practice that an academic institution may perform engineering projects for industry. The Mexican Science Foundation named the largest library with Optical materials in Latin America at CIO the Marija Strojnik Pogačar* Library. Her service to Optica includes two-term appointments as a Deputy Editor for Optics Express and a Topical Editor for Applied Optics.

Strojnik was awarded the SPIE George W. Goddard award for conceiving, implementing, and demonstrating the autonomous technique for optical navigation, first used during the NASA Cassini mission and recently for guiding the JWST along smooth trajectory to L2 observation location. She was awarded six NASA Technology certificates: her research was described in the NASA Technical briefs. Dr. Strojnik served as a guest editor of several issues of Optical Engineering and Journal of Applied Remote Sensing. Her love of optics started in the sixth grade, when she apprenticed with her father in testing an electron microscope. During the Moon landing, Marija became fascinated with space exploration, leading her to study physics, optics, and engineering, earning MS degrees in all three fields. A Slovenian American, Marija is a Fellow of Optica, SPIE, and Sigma Xi. She served as the President of Sigma Xi in 2024. In 2025, she received the David Richardson Medal “For developing seminal optical testing techniques, including vectorial shearing interferometer and rotational shearing interferometer in support of commercial applications, and for academic leadership in optical engineering.”

*MStrojnik’s mother’s maiden name, a Spanish cultural tradition.