Stephen Fantone is a distinguished optical engineer, inventor and entrepreneur who chairs the board of directors of the Hertz Foundation. A 1975 Hertz Fellow, he has served on the board since 2008 and as its chair since 2023.
Fantone is the founder of Optikos, a global leader in optical engineering and metrology solutions, and now serves as its strategic advisor and chair emeritus. He has been a senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT since 1996. He began his career at Polaroid Corporation and has been awarded more than 70 patents spanning a wide spectrum of advanced optical technologies.
Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022, Fantone has been a leader in the optics community for decades. He served as president of Optica (formerly The Optical Society) in 2020 and as its treasurer from 1996 to 2013, and in 2013 the society renamed its Distinguished Service Award the Stephen D. Fantone Distinguished Service Award in his honor. He serves on the boards of the Optica Foundation and The Lee Company, and previously served as chairman of Benthos, Inc. and as a board member at Rofin-Sinar Technologies, Inc. and Zygo Corporation.
Fantone also serves on the boards of the Pioneer New England Legal Foundation and the Talcott Mountain Science Center & Academy, and he is chairperson emeritus of the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research.
Fantone earned S.B. degrees in electrical engineering and management from MIT and a Ph.D. in optics from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester.
