As I complete my first year at the helm of Optical Engineering, I am so grateful for the outstanding editorial board that helps make the journal run. In particular, our senior editors are truly excellent in their professionalism and expertise, making our job of handling such a broad array of optical topics much more manageable. Thus, it with a mixture of emotions that we announce the retirement of two of our senior editors: Dr. Rajpal Sirohi and Dr. Patti Gillespie.

Dr. Rajpal S. Sirohi has served as senior editor at Optical Engineering since 2013 after serving as an associate editor for several years. He is a fellow of SPIE along with several other international optics societies. He was awarded the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award in Diffractive Optics in 2009 and the SPIE Chandra S. Vikram Award in Optical Metrology in 2014. Among the many awards he has received, perhaps the most notable is the ICO Galileo Galilei Award in recognition of his promotion of optics under difficult circumstances. His body of academic work is equally as impressive, comprising nearly 250 academic papers and 14 books authored, including recent volumes on Speckle Metrology (2020) and Optical Methods of Measurement: Wholefield Techniques (2018). His knowledge in the field of optics and the wisdom of his life experience will be missed on our editorial board.

Dr. Patti Gillespie first joined Optical Engineering as an associate editor in 2006 and has served as senior editor since 2013. She is a fellow and lifetime member of SPIE. During her career at the Army Research Laboratory, she rose to associate chief of the Electro-Optics and Photonics Division before her retirement in 2014. She has had a significant role in championing gender equity in the field of optics and photonics. Her expertise in materials, photonic devices and sensors has been a great resource for our editorial board, and her contributions will be missed.