Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem is Professor in Photonics Materials and Fibres at the University of Adelaide and is passionate about glass science, art and technology, and optical fibres. Heike is also Deputy Director of the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) at the University of Adelaide and Director of the Optofab Adelaide Hub at the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF).

In these roles, Heike has established strategic collaborations with key leading experts from 82 university research groups and with 30 industry and defence partners to translate and commercialise her research in a wide range of areas including advanced manufacturing, photonics, sensing and defence. She currently leads a large multidisciplinary team of postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research assistants and technicians. Heike has published over 370 refereed journal papers and conference proceedings, and raised over $40M in research funding.

Heike obtained her PhD in chemistry from the University of Jena, Germany in 1994 and subsequently held two prestigious fellowships. From 2001-2004 she was with the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton, UK. Heike came to the University of Adelaide in 2005.

She was awarded the Woldemar A. Weyl International Glass Science Award in 2001, the University of Adelaide Women’s Research Excellence Mid-Career Award in 2015, and the Winnovation SA Technology Award from the SA Women in Innovation and Technology in 2017, the University of Adelaide Research Leadership Award in 2021, and the Darshana and Arun Varshneya Frontiers of Glass Lectures Award of The American Ceramic Society in 2021. She became a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2017, an honour awarded by peers for having “made significant contributions to the advancement of Optics”. Very recently, she was awarded a South Australian Government Future Industry Making Fellowship and an Australian Research Council Industry Laureate Fellowship in 2023.