Conference

Nobel Prize Lecture

Never say never again

We work in an optical networking industry driven by pure innovation and built on highly precise science. We are the foundation of today’s modern world. But considering our creativity and ingenuity, we sometimes dismiss an idea or a technology only for it to become a mainstay. In this keynote, Dr. Christoph Glingener reflects on some of the key technical advances that weren’t always obvious and became some of the industry’s biggest successes with widespread adaptation. If you learn only one thing in this talk, it’s that in optical networking, never say never again.

Dr. Christoph Glingener is a networking industry pioneer and spend most of his career on innovative optical connectivity solutions. Since 2006, he’s been responsible for steering ADVA’s product innovation. As Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Christoph Glingener oversees the company’s research and development program and directs its global operations. He’s focused on shaping ADVA’s product strategy, building a unified development operations team and propelling its leadership in optical networking, edge cloud and synchronization. Before joining ADVA, Dr. Christoph Glingener held senior positions in academic and corporate organizations, including Marconi Communications (now Ericsson) and Siemens Communications (now Infinera). He holds a Diploma and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.

Scenarios of future innovations in the network

Breakthrough innovations have allowed advancements in scale and cost in the networks. Improved materials, device concepts, impairment mitigations, and basic network structure have all enabled the network to scale in capacity while simultaneously and necessarily simplifying. Another series of radical innovation and rearchitecting of the network will be needed to accommodate the continued increasing scale, the movement of data centers to the edge, the expansion of the on-network devices and the variability of latency requirements, all while reducing the overall power required to run the network. The demands of the future networks and some thoughts on what will be required to address them will be discussed.

“Innovation has been the primary enabler for scale and cost in the network; what are the innovations of tomorrow?”

David F. Welch, Ph.D. co-founded Infinera in 2001, and serves as Chief Innovation Officer and on the Board of Directors. He holds over 130 patents in optical transmission technologies, and has authored over 300 technical publications. In recognition of his technical contributions to the optical industry, he was awarded the OSA’s Adolph Lomb Medal, Joseph Fraunhofer Award and John Tyndall Award, the IET’s JJ Thompson Medal for Achievement in Electronics, and the IEEE Ernst Weber Managerial Leadership Award. A Fellow of the OSA and the IEEE, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2016. Dr. Welch holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Path to a useful quantum computer

Quantum computing will have a profound impact on mankind’s ability to process information, and will enable an increase in computational power at an unimaginable scale, for solving problems across climate, healthcare, energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and beyond. However, to-date no quantum computer has outperformed even relatively modest high performance computers (HPC) at commercially useful tasks. Quantum error correction and scaling to millions of physical qubits are required for commercially relevant quantum computing. Of the various technological approaches being pursued, photons are unique in offer a path that overcomes the scaling challenges of manufacturability, cooling power, control electronics and quantum interconnects – through leveraging established CMOS manufacturing and silicon photonics. In this plenary talk, Dr Thompson will give an overview of PsiQuantum’s approach to quantum computing, outlining the principles of photonic quantum computing, introducing the integrated quantum photonic circuit and highlighting the path to large-scale quantum computing.

Mark Thompson is co-founder and Chief Technologist of PsiQuantum – a quantum computing company pioneering the development of large-scale fault tolerant quantum computers. Thompson has over 20 years’ experience in the fields of integrated photonics and quantum technologies, having previously worked at Corning, Bookham Technology and Toshiba, and held research fellowship at the University of Cambridge and Professorship at the University of Bristol. In 2013 at the University of Bristol, he established the world’s 1st PhD training center in Quantum Engineering (QECDT), and in 2016 the 1st quantum technology incubator and entrepreneurship training center (QTEC) dedicated solely to supporting quantum-technology startups. He has been awarded prestigious UK and European fellowships and prizes (including UK-EPSRC fellowship and EU-ERC starter grant), has more than 150 publications and patents, and founded two startup companies in quantum technologies.