Meet this year's Market Focus speakers
Steve Alleston
Steve Alleston is an industry veteran with over 20 years experience. He began his career after obtaining his PhD from the University of Essex by designing ultralong haul transmission systems for Marconi. During his career he has held a variety of engineering, product management and technology strategy roles, primarily in the telecom and datacom spaces for companies such as Ericsson and Juniper Networks where he gained an appreciation for silicon photonics and the transformative role it can play across multiple segments. Steve is currently director of business development at OpenLight who are developing silicon photonics for applications including datacom and AI/ML as well as LIDAR and optical sensing.
Ken Applebaum, COTSWORKS
Ken Applebaum is the Founder and CEO of COTSWORKS based in Cleveland, Ohio and Fulda, Germany. COTSWORKS is an innovative manufacturer of rugged optical components and subsystems for harsh environment networking and sensing applications. Ken founded the company after a 20-year career in electronics, embedded engineering, and optics. Since founding COTSWORKS, Ken has designed unique optical networks for some of the world’s leading OEMs of commercial and military avionics, tactical military systems, and restricted-access U.S. Government manufacturing and vehicles. Ken has presented papers at various avionics and fiber optics industry events and conferences and has numerous patents awarded, and in process, for harsh environment fiber optics. He resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, three sons, and two Labradors who help keep an eye on COTSWORKS.
Luc Augustin
Luc Augustin received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology. He is the CTO of SMART Photonics, where he is responsible for the technology roadmap, strategy and R&D. His expertise is in photonics, fabrication and characterisation of InP photonic integrated circuits. Prior to SMART he worked at Solland Solar, Philips Research and Cedova, where he always has been active in the development, pilot production and optimization of innovative technologies. He is board member of the IEEE Photonics Benelux chapter, member of the JePPIX steering committee, and member of the Board of Stakeholders of Photonics21.
Vipul Bhatt
Mr. Vipul Bhatt is the VP of Marketing, Datacom Vertical, at Coherent Corp. Vipul has a track record of over 25 years of pioneering product and business development in optical networks, spanning companies such as Corning, Cisco and Inphi. He has been an active contributor to optical standards development in IEEE. He holds a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, New York.
Paul Brooks
Paul Brooks is part of VIAVIs lab and production marketing team and a 25 year+ veteran of the communications test and measurement industry. He holds a PhD from Southampton in Optical Signal Processing and is has held roles in both R&D and marketing, active in the IEEE and OIF he works with colleagues ensuring VIAVI contributes and supports the very latest standards, especially around pluggable coherent optics. He lives in Southern Germany where he laments the lack of first class rugby!
Frank Chang
Frank Chang is an expert of photonic IC technologies, optics transceivers and optical networking, and currently is employed as Chief Engineer for transceiver design at Source Photonics in West Hills of Los Angeles area. Previously he was senior Principle Engineer for Optics Interconnect at CTO Optics Office of Inphi Corp for over 5 years after 12 years’ service at Vitesse Semiconductors. He also held various project and management positions with Cisco/Pirelli, JDS Uniphase etc for working on the design, development, and commercialization of fiber optics components. He specializes in PAM4 related optics design and leads optical system engineering efforts for physical layer IC platform and chipset solutions. He has over 20 years of working experience in high-speed optical interconnects with 95 peer-reviewed journal/conference articles and 4 book chapters. He obtained his Ph.D in Optoelectronics from the Ecole Polytechnique, University of Montreal, Canada.
Hacene Chaouch
Hacene Chaouch is a Distinguished Engineer with Arista Networks. His work focuses on enabling the next generation of optical connectivity for data centers and AI/ML clusters. Recently, he has been working on advancing more power efficient E|O interfaces that can offer both lower latency and lower cost
Ning Deng
Dr. Ning Deng is currently a Technology Expert in Huawei. He has been working on the advanced technology and architecture design for ROADM/OXC and related optical layer products. He has more than 60 patents granted or pending, and over 50 papers in referred international conferences and journals. He actively contributes the community and serves as the technical committee chair or member for a number of conferences/workshops. He has also served as the Editor of multiple ITU-T and CCSA standards. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.
Andrea Di Giglio
Andrea Di Giglio (Dr.Eng) received a Dr. Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa (Italy) and the Engineering License degree from Scuola S. Anna. He joined Telecom Italia Lab (formerly CSELT), that is the Telecom Italia Group’s Company for study, research, experimentation, and qualification in the field of Telecommunications and Information Technology. The fields of his research are addressed toward Internet Security, Storage Area Networks and Optical Networks Architecture. He was involved in the architectural Work Package of the IST Project Nobel (Phase 1 and 2) “Next generation Optical networks for Broadband European Leadership” as Work Package leader and ICT STRONGEST as project coordinator. Dr. Di Giglio is the author of dozens of publications, including books, conference papers and workshops and it is currently the project coordinator of 5G-SOLUTIONS, flagship project for European Commission research for the Verticals’ usage of 5G Connectivity.
Julie Eng
Julie Sheridan Eng was named Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Coherent in 2022. Prior to becoming CTO, Dr. Eng served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Coherent/II-VI’s Optoelectronic Devices and Modules Business Unit. In that role, she oversaw engineering, product management, and operations for GaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), InP directly modulated lasers (DMLs) and detectors, and CMOS/BiCMOS integrated circuits for datacom and 3D sensing applications. In this role, teams she managed ramped GaAs and InP devices for high volume consumer applications. Dr. Eng joined Coherent/II-VI in 2018 via the II-VI acquisition of Finisar. She held various senior management positions at Finisar since joining the company in 2003, including Executive Vice President and General Manager of 3D Sensing, and Executive Vice President of Datacom Engineering. Over the 15 years she managed Datacom and Transceiver Engineering, teams she managed released over 180 fiber optic transceiver products to manufacture and demonstrated numerous industry firsts. Prior to joining Finisar, Dr. Eng was part of AT&T/Lucent/Agere, where she managed datacom transceivers. Dr. Eng is a Past Chair of the IEEE Committee on Women in Engineering and presently serves on the Board of Directors of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America). She has published over a dozen papers, co-authored a book chapter, holds six U.S. patents, and has given numerous invited talks. She holds a B.A. degree summa cum laude in Physics from Bryn Mawr College and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering with honors from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. In 2022, she was elected Fellow of Optica for distinguished contributions to the advancement of optics and photonics.
Alasdair Fikouras
Alasdair Fikouras is a senior development process engineer for Avicena in Scotland, where he is responsible for optical characterisation and process development of Avicena’s remarkable Cavity-Reinforced Optical Micro-Emitters (CROMEs). He completed his PhD from University of St Andrews in 2020 optimising the fabrication process of III-V semiconductors, and characterising them for bio-applications.
Lidia Galdino
Lidia Galdino is a System Engineering Manager at Corning, responsible for defining and driving optical fiber and cable product strategy. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Lightwave Technology, and serves on several technical program committees, including OFC and ECOC. She has authored > 100 peer-reviewed papers on optical fiber communication systems.
Milind Gokhale
As CTO of Casela Technologies Milind creates novel, high power, high efficiency external laser sources and subsystems for datacenters and AI systems. Prior to co-founding Casela in 2019, he served as GM, Laser Devices BU at NeoPhotonics (now Lumentum). That followed Milind’s tenure as CTO at Santur an innovator in DFB laser arrays where his team developed the industry’s first 100G transceiver (10x10 MSA) and coherent PICs. Earlier, he co-founded ASIP/Apogee Photonics (now Broadcom) where Milind commercialized the first uncooled EML. He received his doctorate in EE at University of Connecticut and B. Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Ana González
Dr. Ana González is currently Director of Strategic Partnerships at iPRONICS. Her role is to investigate new applications and identify potential partners for the implementation of Field Programmable Photonic Gate Arrays (FPPGAs) including relationships with the supply chain and supporting customer operations. Former R&D Manager at EPIC (European Photonics Industry Consortium), she has a solid network at the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) industry with a large experience reaching out commercial partners and new adopters of PIC technologies. Her expertise lies in the development of optical systems and the investigation of applications such as Sensing and Datacom. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University Autonomous of Barcelona (UAB) and her PhD degree from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2).
Harald Graber
Harald Graber, holds an MBA and has more than 20 years of experience in the optical communications industry within Tier 1 companies in the United States, Europe and Asia. Prior to EFFECT Photonics, Harald served in various senior roles in Sales, Marketing, Product Management & R&D at BWI, Coriant, Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent and Lucent Technologies.
Drew Guckenberger
Drew Guckenberger is currently Vice President of the High Speed Interconnect Business Unit at MaxLinear. He has more than 20 years of experience in the optical communications field. Prior to MaxLinear, Drew held various engineering and PLM leadership positions at Luxtera, Molex and Cisco. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and has a BASc in engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Lisa Huff
Lisa Huff is a Senior Principal Analyst, Optical Components at Omdia. She joined Ovum (now Omdia) as a Principal Analyst, Optical Components in March 2018. Prior to that, she had her own market research and consulting firm, Discerning Analytics, LLC (DA) for nine years. Lisa is a Certified Data Center Management Professional (CDCMP®) and degreed electrical engineer with over 35 years experience. Her expertise is in data centers, optical components, data communications cabling and connectivity and networking equipment. Lisa has authored over 60 technical papers and market research reports and has chaired and presented at many industry conferences.
Raju Kankipati
Raju Kankipati is currently at POET Technologies heading sales and marketing. He has over 20 years of experience in Optical transceivers, Optical components, Cloud data center and Optical networks. His experience includes MACOM where he was the Senior Director of Product Management for optical components, such as laser, photodetectors, silicon photonics, and photonic solutions. Prior to that, Raju worked at Arista Networks as a Senior Product Manager and Engineering Manager where he collaborated closely with data center customers to bring unique switching products as well as Optical transceivers to market. Raju worked as a Product Manager at Cisco prior to joining Arista. Raju started his career as an Optics Engineer at Opnext in Japan (now part of Lumentum) and later held various roles in sales and marketing at the company. Raju received his MBA degree from UC Berkeley (Haas School of Business) and completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics from BITS, Pilani in India
Robert Keys
Robert Keys is a Senior Director of Optical Transmission R&D at Ciena. In this role, Robert oversees all aspects of optical systems transmission including link performance assurance, planning tools, and optical hardware development. In his 30+ years of experience, Robert has held several leadership positions including VP of Packet Optical R&D at Juniper Networks where he developed optical systems for switching and routing platforms, as well as CTO at BTI Systems.
Gunter Larisch
Gunter Larisch is Product Manager at TRUMPF Photonic Components GmbH, Ulm, Germany. He joined TRUMPF in 2021 with more than ten years research experiences on datacom VCSELs. Gunter was founding member of the Bimberg Chinese–German Center for Green Photonics and Associate Professor funded via the 100-talent program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received the Diploma (M.Sc. equivalent) degree in applied physics and the Ph.D. degree in science from the Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow there.
Mark Laubach
Mark Laubach is a Senior Design Architecture Engineer in the Passive Optical Network (PON) R&D group at Ciena. He has over 30 years of experience in broadband subscriber network standards and architecture spanning from cable modem architecture through to today’s very high speed PON development and standardization. His more recent standards activities include ITU-T Study Group 15 Question 2 Gigabit-PON (GPON), and Cablelabs Coherent-PON (CPON). He is an inventor of several U.S. patents on broadband access technology. He is a Senior Member of the Society of Cable Telecommunication Engineers (scte.org) and an IEEE Life Fellow member (ieee.org)
Michael Lebby
Dr. Michael S. Lebby was appointed as CEO of Lightwave Logic (NASDAQ:LWLG) in 2017. An Anglo-American entrepreneur, Lebby started in telecom research with the British Government in 1977. He worked in photonics at AT&T Bell Labs (1985-89) and at Motorola in the 90s, where he co-authored the first patent for the oxide VCSEL diode laser, now widely used. He led the USA's optoelectronics trade association (OIDA) from 2005-2010. Recognized as PIC business leader of the year in 2018, he's a technical expert for the European Commission, a Fellow of IEEE and OSA, and has run technical start-ups and commercialized photonics technology.
Greg D. Le Cheminant
Greg D. Le Cheminant, Measurement Applications Specialist, Digital Communications Analysis, Internet Infrastructure Solutions, Keysight Technologies Greg D. Le Cheminant is a Measurement Applications Specialist and Strategic Planner for digital communications analysis products in the Internet Infrastructure Solutions Group. He is responsible for development of new measurement applications and products for the group’s optical communications test products. He represents Keysight on several industry standards committees. Greg's experience at Keysight/Agilent/Hewlett-Packard began in 1985 with five years in manufacturing engineering, and the remainder in various technical marketing positions. He is a contributing author to four textbooks on high-speed digital communications and has written numerous technical articles on test related topics. He holds two patents. Greg earned BSEET and MSEE degrees from Brigham Young University.
Will Leckie
Will Leckie is a Senior Manager in the coherent modem development team at Ciena and has been involved in every Ciena WaveLogic coherent modem design and product introduction during his 17-year tenure at Nortel/Ciena. Will has an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and B.Sc. in Applied Physics from the University of Waterloo, where he was the Valedictorian of the Faculty of Science. Will is the author/co-author of seven publications and holds one patent.
Dr. Junjie Li
Dr. Junjie Li has worked with China Telecom for nearly 20 years in R&D and deployment of optical communication and networking technology. Currently he is Chief Expert of Optical Transport Network in China Telecom. He is also an adjunct professor of Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications (BUPT). His research focuses on high speed WDM transmission, new optical fibers, optical networking, transport SDN, etc. Dr. Li has served as technical committee member for many international academic conferences, including OFC, ACP, and OECC. He served as China Telecom representative in OIF (Optical Internetworking Forum) from 2008 to 2021, and served as OIF Board Member from 2014 to 2017, and OIF NetOp (Net Operator) WG Chair from 2017 to 2021. Currently, Dr. Li is the president of IPEC (International Photonics & Electronics Committee).
Karen Liu
Karen Liu is currently at Nubis Communications, Inc. Previously she was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Lightwave Logic, Inc.and Kaiam Corp. As Principal Analyst at Ovum/Informa/RHK she covered markets as an industry analyst and advised vendors of advanced optical components and a broad range of other emerging technologies. Dr. Liu initially moved from technical R&D to Marketing at Tellabs in order to introduce customers to the then-new approach of DWDM optical networking. She was involved in architecting the first optical networking products and their required components at Tellabs and IBM. She received a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University in the field of fiber optics, and a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University.
Andrew Lord
Andrew joined BT in 1985 after a BA in Physics from Oxford University. He has helped design a wide range of optical network systems and technologies, including long haul subsea and terrestrial DWDM networks. He has been responsible for optical fibre and systems specifications. He currently leads BT’s optical research including optical access, high speed transmission and quantum communications. He has recently initiated BT’s quantum research, with applications in areas such as secure communications, timing and sensing. He regularly speaks at conferences, sits on several organising committees, including ECOC and was Technical Program Chair for OFC 2015 and General Chair for OFC 2017. He is TPC co-chair of ECOC 2023. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, He is Visiting Professor at Essex University, Fellow of the IEEE and a BT Distinguished Engineer.
Mark Lutkowitz
Mark Lutkowitz, Principal and co-founder of fibeReality, LLC, has 40+ years of experience as a consultant, gathering and analyzing worldwide intelligence on optical components and systems, including in telecommunications, datacom, consumer, automobile, and other businesses. With an intense concentration on demand-side, primary research, he is one of the most objective, no-nonsense analysts in the industry. Mark has consulted to some of the largest manufacturers in the world and has authored countless studies. His blog articles have set a new standard for comprehensive and thought-provoking insights in the optics space. Mark is also a frequent speaker and contributor at optics events.
Thorsten Mayer
As Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Thorsten is responsible for Vanguard's strategy development and execution to ensure sustainable growth and innovation. He joined Vanguard in November 2020 and served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for one year before he stepped into the role of CEO. Prior to joining Vanguard Automation, Thorsten has held several regional and global leadership positions at National Instruments (NI) in R&D, strategic marketing, sales, and operations. Amongst his roles at NI he served as Managing Director for East-Central Europe quadrupling revenues and profits over seven years and led high-impact transformational projects at the global level as Chief of Staff and Global Head of NI’s Alliance Business & Strategic Partnerships. He has lived and worked in four countries. Thus, he offers U.S. Corporate, European and Asian experience and a strong international background to business development and geographical expansion. Thorsten has also been contributing through his voluntary work at SWAN Impact Network, both as investor and advisor, to startups with measurable social or environmental impact. Thorsten holds a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering.
Andrew McKee
Dr Andrew McKee received a BSc (Hons) degree in Electronic Engineering and a Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow. His research was in the area of Quantum Well Intermixing (QWI) of InGaAsP MQW structures for Photonic Integrated Circuits. Andrew has extensive experience in all aspects of III-V optoelectronic device design and manufacture, gained with Agilent Technologies. As a founding member of CST Global, he is responsible at Sivers Photonics for the technical roadmap of the company, including developing new device designs and process technologies.
Stefan Melin
Stefan Melin is a senior optical network architect at Telia Company and has over 20 years’ of experience in transmission systems and optical networks. He holds a Master’s Degree in Electronic Engineering with specialty on Telecommunications/digital signal processing. Stefan’s technical areas of expertise are techno-economic studies, network optimization, procedures, rules and strategies for how to develop the Telia Company automated open optical networks.
Francois Moore
Francois Moore is an Optical Architect & Advisor Fujitsu Networks Communications, specializing in DWDM Optical Transport. He is a recognized Optical Networking expert and has recently received the title of Global Distinguished Fujitsu Engineer, a designation only awarded to few experts within Fujitsu. Previously, he worked in product planning, product management and marketing within the Fujitsu FLASHWAVE product family. Francois has over 30 years’ experience in various optical transport areas, including ROADM & DWDM, G.709 & OTN, as well as SONET & Ethernet. As a lifelong learner, he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Texas in Dallas in Telecommunications Engineering with a special interest in Open Optical Networking research.
Mark Nowell
Mark Nowell is a Cisco Fellow in Cisco’s Optics and Optical Systems Group. His focus is on next generation interconnect technology innovation to meet Cisco's needs. Mark is also active within the industry standards and forums and has chaired multiple IEEE 802.3 Ethernet projects. He is currently vice-chair of 802.3df/dj (800 & 1600 GbE). He represents Cisco on various industry alliances and Consortium. Mark also chairs or co-chairs a number of industry MSA (Multi-source Agreement) groups focusing on next generation optical module form factors (QSFP-DD, OSFP) and optical interface signaling technology (100G Lambda MSA).
Rajiv Pancholy
Rajiv Pancholy has over 20 years of industry experience and is currently responsible for Broadcom’s Optical Systems Division (OSD) Hyperscale Strategy. Before joining OSD, Rajiv was in Broadcom’s Physical Layer Products Division (PLP) where he successfully launched the industry’s first 7nm CMOS optical PAM-4 DSP for 400G DR4 and 100G DR1 optical modules which are now ramping inside hyperscale data centers. Prior to joining Broadcom, Rajiv held marketing and engineering positions at Semtech, Sierra Monolithics, Mindspeed, and Sun Microsystems. Before 7am you can find him surfing his local break in his hometown of San Clemente, CA.
Grégory Pandraud
Grégory Pandraud received a Ph.D. in optics and optoelectronics from the University of Saint Etienne (France). He is an international expert in the field of optical devices with more than 20 years experience. Prior to joining Ommatidia-Lidar, Grégory was assistant professor at the Technical University of Delft (the Netherlands). Before joining TU Delft, Grégory was with Bookham Technology ltd (U.K) and later with Opsitech SA (France) as senior design manager.
Sanjai Parthasarathi
Sanjai Parthasarathi joined Coherent Corp. in 2013 and has been the Chief Marketing Officer since 2019. Previously, Dr. Parthasarathi was Vice President, Product Marketing and Strategy, Photonics, since 2015. Prior to Coherent, he served as Senior Director, Product Line Management, at Oclaro. With over 28 years of broad management and technical experience, Dr. Parthasarathi has held a variety of progressive roles in R&D, manufacturing, product line management, and marketing, including senior business and technical management positions at Avanex Corporation, Oplink Communications, TeraStor, Western Digital, and Concurrent Technologies Corporation. Dr. Parthasarathi graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, and holds an M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from the Pennsylvania State University.
Muhammad Sarwa
Muhammad Sarwar is currently distinguished global planner at Fujitsu Network Communications. He is responsible for strategy and planning of portfolio offerings. He holds MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in New York and is author of 10+ US patents related to data communications, optical transport, and network security.
Brian Smith
Brian Smith is responsible for optical transport product and technology strategy within the CTO office at Lumentum. Prior to joining Lumentum in 2014, Brian held various product management and optical networking design roles in a career spanning more than 25 years in the optical networking industry.
Peter Stern
Peter Stern, currently leading Voyant Photonics, has spent the last twenty five years creating companies in a wide variety of sectors spanning from financial services to social media, and now semiconductors. In 1996 Peter co-founded Datek Online, which revolutionized the retail brokerage world providing low cost, instantaneous executions unlike any of its competitors. By 1997 it was the 4th largest online stock brokerage firm. In 2003 Datek Online merged a competitor to form the second largest online brokerage firm. Peter went on to found or lead several other technology-first companies, and remains an active early stage investor.
Matt Sysak
Matt Sysak, Chief Editor, CW-WDM MSA He has had a distinguished career as a technologist and leader in photonics and lasers and is the chief editor of the CW-WDM multi-source agreement. Matt is currently the VP of Laser and Platform Engineering at Ayar Labs. Prior to joining the company, Matt spent more than 10 years at Intel working in silicon photonics where he led the System Modeling and Architecture team and was responsible for developing and qualifying the hybrid silicon laser technology that ramped from graduate research into >1 million units shipped. Matt holds MS and PhD degrees from University of California Santa Barbara and a BS degree from Penn State University in Chemical Engineering.
Terry Thorn
Terry Thorn joined Ayar Labs after 24 years at Intel Corporation where he held a variety of leadership positions in product line management, marketing, global cloud strategy, new business development and sales. Most recently, Terry was the GM of Global Accounts in the Cloud & Enterprise Sales Group with direct ownership of some of Intel's largest customers. He has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Alabama.
Sergi Vizcaíno
Sergi Vizcaíno has extensive experience in both start-up and corporate environments, particularly in the science-based industry. He holds a BSc in Molecular Biology and an MSc in Neuroscience, providing him with a solid foundation in both science and business. With a clear focus on international business development and science communication, Sergi bridges the gap between highly technical products and a wider audience. As the Manager of Strategy and Outreach, he is dedicated to raising awareness of LuxQuanta's solutions and the need for Quantum Cryptography to secure critical communications.
Dave Welch
David F. Welch, Ph.D. co-founded Infinera in 2001, and serves as Chief Innovation Officer and member of the Board of Directors. He holds over 130 patents in optical transmission technologies, and has authored over 300 technical publications in the same field. In recognition of his technical contributions to the optical industry, he has been 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. He is a Fellow of the OSA and the IEEE. In 2016, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Welch holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.
Scott Wilkinson
Scott Wilkinson has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 25 years. As Lead Analyst for Optical Components at Cignal AI, he conducts quantitative and qualitative research on the optical components market. Dr. Wilkinson held senior positions in product management, technical marketing, and systems engineering for Hitachi, ECI Telecom, MRV, Fujitsu, Kestrel Solutions, and Parama Networks. A noted speaker at telecom conferences and events, Wilkinson is also a frequent contributor to trade publications and is the author of the book “Telecommedy”. Wilkinson has a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Tom Williams
Tom Williams is responsible for marketing at Acacia, working closely with the product teams and actively participating in multiple industry standards activities. Prior to Acacia, Tom spent 14 years at Optium and Finisar Corporations, where he held various management roles, including Director of Product Line Management for high speed (>100G) transmission products. Tom has also held positions at Lucent Technologies and Northrop Grumman Corporation. He has an MS in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Widener University.
Yi Xie
Yi Xie joined imec in 2016. He is currently responsible for high-speed optical transceivers and Lidar business. Before that he was managing the business of imec Silicon Photonics and ASIC services. He holds a PhD degree from Ghent University in Electrical Engineering. He has over 15 years of experience in microelectronic R&D and business development.
Rang-Chen Yu
Dr. Rang-Chen Yu is currently Senior Vice President of Sifotonics Technologies. Before joining SiFotonics, Dr. Yu was Vice President and General Manager of Optoelectronic Solutions business unit of Oplink Communications (Acquired by Molex). Dr. Yu has been an active promoter of silicon photonics technologies and a key contributor to numerous optical networking industry standards and MSAs. He was Global Vice President for Source Photonics, and Senior Director of system engineering of Agility Communications (acquired by JDSU). He earned his Ph. D. in Solid State Physics at University of Pennsylvania, and B. S. in Physics from Peking University.
Wenyu Zhao
Wenyu Zhao, deputy director of the Institute of Technology and Standards Research of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, senior engineer, vice chairman of the International Photonics & Electronics Committee (IPEC), deputy leader of the ST7 WG2 working group of the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), leader of the cloud & dedicated line working group of Next Generation Optical Transport Network Forum (NGOF). Currently, he is mainly engaged in technical and industrial research, standard formulation, evaluation and verification in the fields of ultra-high speed optical transmission, 5G transport, optical module devices, etc.