Dr. Joseph Owen is a Principal Process Engineer at Raytheon Technologies.  Joseph joined the world of precision engineering in 2010 when Dr. Matthew Davies invited him to join his diamond machining research group as an undergraduate research assistant.  Joseph’s main area of interest is manufacturing freeform optics, most often by diamond machining.  In 2011, Joseph attended his first ASPE event, the Spring Topical Meeting on Structured and Freeform Surfaces.  Joseph has enjoyed sharing and gaining knowledge from some of the most respected members in the fields of precision engineering, manufacturing, and optics at conferences like CIRP, OSA and SPIE’s Optifab.  While in graduate school, Joseph had the privilege to work for a micro-optics company, DigitalOptics Corp, where he continued his training in diamond machining, metrology, and process development/improvement.  In 2014, he returned to UNC Charlotte as a research assistant to complete his Doctorate under the direction of Dr. Matthew Davies with much influence from Dr. Chris Evans.  His research during this time focused on cutting mechanics of diamond machining of brittle materials, toolpath design and tool and machine error correction methodologies.  After spending 4 additional years at UNC Charlotte as an Assistant Research Professor developing processes for the Center for Freeform Optics and various optics companies, Joseph connected with John Schaefer and was hired by Raytheon in Richardson, Texas in 2019.  At Raytheon, he has expanded his freeform optics knowledge in the areas of high precision optics production, freeform metrology and surface quality.  In 2021, Joseph Owen and Jay Udayasankaran co-hosted the 2021 Spring Topical Meeting on Structured and Freeform Surfaces.