Special Events

Ms. Lisa R. Sanders is the Director of Science and Technology for Special Operations Forces, Acquisition, Technology & Logistics (SOF AT&L), U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. She is responsible for all research and development funded activities. Ms. Sanders has over 30 years of civilian Federal service.

Ms. Sanders entered Federal Service as an Electronics Engineer at Naval Avionics Center in Indianapolis, Indiana where she served in quality engineering, production engineering and program management. In 1996, she transferred to Naval Air Warfare Center and Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), Patuxent River, MD, serving as an Electronics Engineer and Program Manager for the E-2C Hawkeye aircraft. In 2003, she assumed responsibility for the production and modification of the CV-22. During her time at

NAVAIR, she managed one of the first Multi- Year Procurements, and executed the modification and delivery of CV-22 production and developmental test aircraft.

Ms. Sanders transferred to USSOCOM in 2005, where she retained responsibility for CV-22 production and worked as the Systems Acquisition Manager for the C-130 program in Program Executive Office Fixed Wing managing all C-130 projects across the Special Operations Forces inventory. In 2010, Ms. Sanders was promoted to position of Deputy Director for the Science and Technology Directorate; and in 2011, was assigned to the position of Director, Science & Technology.

In 2014, Ms. Sanders left USSOCOM to attend the Defense Acquisition University Senior Service College Fellowship in Aberdeen MD. She graduated in 2015, and was assigned to Headquarters, Air Force serving as the chair of the Air Force Capability Development Working Group. In 2016, she was selected as a Defense Intelligence Senior Leader.

At heart Dr. George Fischer is still a high school science teacher which was his first job after receiving a BS from MIT. In 1996 he finished a PhD in physics at the University of Rochester, where he studied under Robert Boyd at the Institute of Optics. He then grew, polished, and tested photorefractive crystals at Hanscom AFB. At Bell Labs, he built up a dual-clad amplifier fiber characterization lab and transferred the testing technology to what would become OFS.
For the next ten years he did not become a millionaire at optical start-up companies, lending a hand in many areas of research and production of all-optical switches.

For the past twelve years, he has been at Picatinny Arsenal. There he divides his time between photonics research, teaching Advanced Mathematics at the Army Armament Graduate School, and serving as a STEM outreach volunteer. For Optica, he has led two international teams designing the 2013 Solid State Lighting and the 2015 The Power of Light outreach posters. He also revised the activities and experiments on their Optics4Kids website. He was an early and frequent recipient of the Optics Suitcase. He was honored and congratulated in a New Jersey State Senate resolution for his STEM efforts. He has been active in STEM outreach for over thirty-five years. He has been collaborating with Pauline Kim for over fifty years.

Pauline Kim has been a science teacher for 35 years, working with students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from MIT and did her graduate work in education at California State University Northridge. She has taught high school biology, chemistry, environmental science, and science research. She currently teaches kindergarten through fifth grade science. Her love of science and nature was inspired by her parents, an engineer and an artist. She enjoys encouraging children’s curiosity and guiding them in the development of their scientific thinking.