She served as the president of the SPIE. She is the winner of the SPIE Gold Medal. Her life is a story that could easily be transformed into a movie. The story of Katarina Svanberg teaches us that it is possible to emerge from a modest background, dedicate 10 prolific years of your life to something completely different, then find your way to medicine in mid-30s, and spend next 9 years of your life pioneering a topic within the field of biophotonics, which would later make you a top-tier scientist. Magnificent, right?