Monika Ritsch-Marte

In 2007 she was elected the first female president of the Austrian Physical Society. For her achievements in the fields of optics and photonics, Ritsch-Marte was elected OSA Fellow in 2013 by the Optical Society of America. In 2014, she was elected as a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and in 2016 raised to full membership.

Monika Ritsch-Marte was raised in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg, graduated in 1980 from grammar school in Bregenz, and earned a physics diploma from the University of Innsbruck in 1984. In 1985 she went to the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, earning her PhD in 1988 under the supervision of Dan Walls and Crispin Gardiner with a thesis on generation and application of non-classical states of light, so-called squeezed states of light. She returned to Innsbruck for postdoctoral research in the group of Peter Zoller and then stayed at the University of Innsbruck for several years on a "Charlotte-Bühler Habilitationsprogramm" of the Austrian Science Fund. Some extended research visits abroad (Helsinki, JILA/Boulder, Konstanz) fall into this period, as well as half a year at the Universita degli Studi di Milano in the group of Luigi Lugiato supported by an APART grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1995 Monika received her Habilitation in the field of Theoretical Physics as the University of Innsbruck. In 1998 she was appointed full professor in medical physics at the medical faculty of the University of Innsbruck, which meant a re-orientation towards biomedical optics (from this time on publishing under the name Ritsch-Marte). With the creation of the Medical University of Innsbruck as an independent university in 2004 she was appointed director of the Division of Biomedical Physics.

Monika Ritsch-Marte (born 26 September 1961 in Höchst) is an Austrian physicist in the fields of biomedical optics, theoretical quantum optics and non-linear optics.