I am very pleased to welcome Arti Agrawal to the JOSA A editorial team. Coming to us from the University of Technology Sydney, she is our first editor from Australia since Greg Forbes served on the JOSA A team from 1991 to 1997. Arti will cover papers on propagation and scattering, and replaces Fabrizio Frezza, who took over this area from me when I was appointed Deputy Editor in 2014. Fabrizio’s six years were marked by numerous advances in the field, and he handled important papers in JOSA A with care, often making them better through a well-managed review process. During that time he also contributed three tutorials [1–3] and six research papers to the pages of JOSA A, strengthening the Journal through his authorship.

Before all of that, Arti contributed to JOSA A with her 2004 paper on methods for nonparaxial beam propagation [4]. That is a quintessential JOSA A paper: 16 years on, it continues to be cited, and even recently by another JOSA A paper. Arti’s many great articles, book chapters, and contributions as a book editor have helped build the field we work in. Her wonderful 2013 book on finite element modeling for photonics [5] arrived on the scene just as it was needed.

Beyond her technical contributions, Arti is a brilliant and determined advocate for inclusion and equity and writes a fantastic blog about science, education, and policy [6], which I read for Arti’s wit and wisdom. Arti will be a wonderful member of the JOSA A team, and I am grateful she has joined us.

Arti Agrawal

Propagation and Scattering

Arti Agrawal’s research interests lie in the development of numerical techniques and simulation of photonic components. She works on simulating the behavior of electromagnetic fields in a wide array of components: solar cells, optical fibers, plasmonics, nanophotonics, etc. She is an expert on finite-element- and finite-difference-based techniques. She has published a book on the finite element method for photonics and has co-edited a book on trends in computational photonics. She received her bachelor’s degree in physics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, India, and her master’s and Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. She was a Royal Society postdoctoral fellow at City, University of London, UK, where she joined the faculty and stayed until 2017. In 2018, she moved to the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, as Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Data Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering and IT. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and OSA, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics, and a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Physicist. Arti was awarded the 2020 IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Service Award for exceptional contributions to the Photonics Society as a champion of Diversity and Inclusion initiatives.