Celia Sagastume

About

I'm fascinated by the movement of light.

On one hand, I design slanted surface relief gratings. Periodic structures a few hundred nanometres across, shaped to steer light through glass and fabricated in the cleanroom at Waterloo's Quantum-Nano Fabrication and Characterization Facility.

On the other it's adaptive optics: instrumentation that corrects the eye's own aberrations well enough to resolve individual photoreceptors, which is the best way to test what we actually show to the retina. I'm building an AOSLO with Austin Roorda at the University of Waterloo, the latest iteration of his design, to do exactly that.

I took the long path here. Before starting my PhD, I spent four years on the Vision Science team at Google XR, running psychophysics studies and building the optical benchtops and software behind them. Before that: a Master's in Psychology Research, a year coordinating clinical research at UCSF, a stint teaching undergrads, and a data science bootcamp I still draw on every day.

Portrait of Celia Sagastume
Email
celia.sagastume@uwaterloo.ca
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Education

  1. 2026 – present

    PhD, Vision Science

    University of Waterloo · Waterloo, ON

  2. 2015 – 2017

    MA, Psychology Research

    San Francisco State University · San Francisco, CA

  3. —

    Graduate coursework, Computer Science

    Georgia Institute of Technology

  4. —

    Data Science Bootcamp

    Metis

Positions

  1. Jun – Aug 2026

    Visiting Researcher

    University of Waterloo · Waterloo, ON

  2. Nov 2023 – May 2026

    Applied Vision Researcher

    Google (contract) · San Francisco Bay Area, CA

  3. Apr 2022 – Nov 2023

    Applied Vision Research Assistant

    Google (contract) · San Francisco Bay Area, CA

  4. Feb – May 2022

    Teaching Assistant

    Metis

  5. Aug – Dec 2018

    Lecturer, Statistics for Psychology

    San Francisco State University · San Francisco, CA

  6. Aug – Dec 2018

    Lecturer, Psychology of Gender

    Palo Alto University · Palo Alto, CA

  7. Jun 2017 – Jul 2018

    Clinical Research Coordinator

    UCSF · San Francisco, CA

  8. Oct 2015 – Jun 2017

    Graduate Student Researcher

    San Francisco State University · San Francisco, CA

Skills

Vision & psychophysics

Psychophysical methods Visual perception Light adaptation Visual sensitivity Temporal & spatial resolution Experimental design Human factors & comfort studies Standardized rating scale design

Display & optical metrology

Colorimetry White point & chromaticity matching Gamma & spectral calibration Color space transforms (XYZ ↔ RGB) MTF via slanted-edge Contrast ratio & ambient contrast PSF & optical blur characterization Defect and artifact visibility Fourier image quality analysis

Binocular vision & instrumentation

Haploscope design & alignment Binocular fusion Dichoptic methods Binocular overlap & depth perception Photodiode-based display characterization Hardware prototyping Optical benchtop development

Optics & fabrication

Adaptive optics (AOSLO) Surface relief gratings Waveguide design RCWA Optical simulation (PSF, efficiency maps) Nanofabrication (QNFCF)

Software & data

Python MATLAB PsychToolbox SQL Git & version control SOPs Data dashboards GUI tooling for lab workstations