Connie Chang-Hasnain is currently Chairperson of Berxel Photonics and Professor Emerita of the University of California, Berkeley.  Chang-Hasnain formerly served as  the Whinnery Distinguished Chair Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining UC Berkeley as Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1996, Chang-Hanain was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Communications Research (1987–1992) and Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (1992–1995). She served the university in many leadership roles, including Chair of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group 2006–2017, Chief Academic Officer of Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS) 2015–2018 and Associate Dean for Strategic Alliances of College of Engineering 2014–2019. She was the Founding Co-Director of Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) 2015-2020. She is an Honorary Member of A.F. Ioffe Institute and a Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University, Peking University, National Jiao Tung University, National Taiwan University and National University of Singapore.

Chang-Hasnain is the 2021 president of Optica. A member since her student years, Chang-Hasnain has been an active volunteer and has served our society in different positions, including Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology (2007-2012), elected Director-at-Large on the OSA Board of Directors (1998-2000) and member of the OSA Centennial Advisory Panel (2014-2016).  Chang-Hasnain has been an enthusiastic meetings volunteer and organizer. She served as CLEO Program Co-chair (1997) and General Co-chair (1999); OSA Slow and Fast Light Topical Meeting Program Co-Chair (2006) and General Co-chair (2007); and OSA Frontiers in Optics Conference General Co-Chair (2007). She was the General Technical Co-Chair (2004) and General Co-Chair (2005) for the Asia Pacific Optical Communications Conference. Her other volunteer positions include membership on the following: IEEE Photonics Society Board of Governors; and the U.S.National Research Council’s Board on Assessment of NIST Programs, Study on Optics and Photonics and U.S. Advisory Committee to the International Commission on Optics.

Chang-Hasnain received her B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Davis (1982) and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley (1987). 

Chang-Hasnain’s research interests range from semiconductor photonic devices to materials and physics, with current foci on high contrast gratings and metastructures, vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and their applications. She received the Okawa Prize (2018), UNESCO Medal For the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies (2015), IEEE David Sarnoff Award (2011), OSA Nick Holonyak Jr. Award (2007), IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Award for Scientific Achievement (2003), the Microoptics Award from Japan Society of Applied Physics (2009), DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (2008), von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2009) and Guggenheim Fellowship (2009). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, OSA and IEEE and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.