Month: November 2020

2 minutes read The global challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the longer term effects of climate change require coordinated efforts by the scientific and engineering communities to provide accurate information to government officials to guide them as they put in place evidenced-based governmental policies to mitigate and adapt to these major challenges. I will discuss recent joint international programs sponsored by the Optical Society (OSA) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) for developing and deploying photonics instrumentation to measure and monitor greenhouse and air pollution gases in urban settings and an innovative program sponsored by the OSA Foundation for deploying UV-C based safe and effective decontamination equipment for decontaminating personal protection equipment in limited resource setting. These programs are coordinating the activities of international teams of OSA and AGU scientists and engineers and are providing them with the opportunities to productively engage with government officials in their regions and make significant contributions to meeting these global challenges.