A New Optical Fiber Testbed for the Photonics Community · 2020. 6. 24. · April 2020 Vol. 34, No. 2 A New Optical Fiber Testbed for the Photonics Community Also Inside: • Photonics

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A New Optical Fiber Testbed for the Photonics Community

Also Inside:• Photonics Worldwide—This is My Lab• OFC 2020 Wrap Up

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April 2020 Volume 34, Number 2

COLUMNS

Editor’s Column . . . . . . . . . . 2 President’s Column . . . . . . . . . . . 3

FEATURE

Research Highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 – Towards Space-Division Multiplexed Transmission: The World-Wide First and Unique Testbed

with Deployed Special Fibers for the Photonics Community

April 2020 IEEE PHOTONICS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 1

15

23

Industry Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11• Life at a Photonics Startup: Lessons Learned

Get to Know Your IEEE Photonics Society Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . .15Photonics Worldwide—This is My Lab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19• Message from IDL 2020 Steering Committee to Supporters

of the International Day of Light• OFC 2020: Blended In-person & Virtual Conference Offered

Global Participation • Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) Meeting,

Symposium & Workshop• Photonics Society of Chinese Americans Announces the

Winners of the First Tingye Li Memorial Scholarship Award• Photonics Society Congratulates Members Elected to the

National Academy of Engineering

Careers and Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24• Announcing Two New IEEE Photonics Society Awards• Call for Distinguished Service Award• 2020 Graduate Student Scholarship Program:

Applications are Now Being Accepted

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27• The IEEE Learning Network (ILN):

Your Place to Find IEEE Continuing Education• Chapter Best Practices: Kenyatta University Chapter, Kenya

Conferences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30• IEEE Photonics Society Conferences• Call for Papers-Optical Interconnects 2020• Call for Papers-Summer Topicals 2020• Call for Papers-CLEO Pacific Rim 2020• Call for Papers-RAPID 2020• Call for Papers-Group IV Photonics 2020• Call for Papers-IEEE Photonics Conference 2020• Call for Papers-International Semiconductor Laser Conference 2020• IEEE Photonics Society Co-Sponsored Events• BIGGS 2020

Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37• JSTQE CFP: Optical Signal Processing• JSTQE CFP: Advanced Photonic Modulation• JSTQE CFP: Biophotonics• JSTQE CFP: Nanobiophotonics• PTL: IEEE Photonics Conference 2020

April 2020Vol. 34, No. 2www.PhotonicsSociety.org

A New Optical Fiber Testbed for the Photonics Community

Also Inside:• Photonics Worldwide—This is My Lab

• OFC 2020 Wrap Up

28

http://www.PhotonicsSociety.org

2 IEEE PHOTONICS SOCIETY NEWSLETTER April 2020

PresidentCarmen MenoniColorado State University USAPhone: 970-491-8659/555 Email: [email protected]

Past PresidentChennupati JagadishAustralian National UniversityCanberra, AustraliaPh: +61-2-61250363Email: ChennupatiJagadish@anu .edu.au

Secretary-TreasurerDan M. MaromThe Hebrew University of JerusalemSchool of EngineeringEdmund Safra CampusJerusalem, Israel 91904Tel: + 972 2 658 4851Email: [email protected]

Board of GovernorsN. Fontaine A. PeacockM. Hutchinson S. RalphA. Kasukawa M. SanderM. Mashanovitch S. SavoryN. Nishiyama M. SuzukiL. Oxenlowe J. Yao

Vice PresidentsConferences—Perry ShumFinance & Admin—Xiuling LiMembership & RegionalActivities—Fatima Garcia-GunningPublications—Aaron HawkinsTechnical Affairs—Lesile Ann Rusch

Newsletter StaffEditor-in-ChiefNicolas Fontaine Nokia Bell Laboratories791 Holmdel Rd, Holmdel, NJ 07733732-888-7262Email: [email protected]

Associate Editor of AustraliaJoel CarpenterThe University of Queensland AustraliaBrisbane St Lucia, QLD 4072Email: [email protected]

Associate Editor of Central, Latin and South AmericanJuan A. Hernandez CorderoInstitute of Materials ResearchDepartment of Rheology and Mechanics of Materials

National Autonomous University of MexicoCircuito Exterior s / n, Ciudad Universitaria,AP 70-360; Coyoacán, Mexico City 04510, MexicoEmail: [email protected]

Associate Editor of Asia & PacificNicholas H. L. WongGLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore Pte. Ltd.60 Woodlands Industrial Park D Street 2Singapore 738406Email: [email protected]

Associate Editor of Northern EuropeMartin LaverySchool of EngineeringRankine BuildingUniversity of GlasgowOakfield AvenueG12 [email protected]

Associate Editor of Southern EuropeIvana GasullaITEAM Research InstituteUniversitat Politècnica de ValènciaCamino de Vera, 46022 ValenciaSpainEmail: [email protected]

Student EditorNaznin AkterINSYST Integrated Nanosystems Research LaboratoryElectrical and Computer Engineering, EC-3975Florida International University10555 W Flagler Street. Miami, FL 33174Email: [email protected]

Student EditorSenta L. JantzenOptoelectronics Research CentreUniversity of SouthamptonSouthamptonSO17 1BJ, UKEmail: [email protected]

Staff Editor Lisa Sandt IEEE Photonics Society 445 Hoes Lane Piscataway, NJ 08854 Tel: 1 732 465 6662 Fax: 1 732 981 1138 Email: [email protected]

IEEE Photonics Society

IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, andbullying. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

IEEE Photonics Society News (USPS 014-023) is published bimonthly by the Photonics Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., Corporate Office: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10017-2394. Printed in the USA. One dollar per member per year is included in the Society fee for each member of the Photonics Society. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Photonics Society Newsletter, IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854.

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Editor’s ColumnNICOLAS FONTAINE

Hello from social distancing! I hope everyone is staying safe and also being able to get their work done from their homes! I am enjoying the time at home with the family, however, I have been unable to get most of my work done on time! There have been some interesting side-effects/good things have come out of social distancing. I have been communicating more with my colleagues around the world and have been getting much better at cooking.

The research highlight, “Towards Space-Division Multiplexed Transmission: The World-Wide First and Unique Testbed with Deployed Special”, describes a fi-ber optics testbed built in the city of L’Aquila, Italy. It is written by Cristian Antonelli, an editor for the Journal of Lightwave Technology, and his colleagues. This testbed is an exciting opportunity for researchers around the world to conduct experiments on new fibers in a beautiful city. Please read the article and get in touch with the authors!

Our two young professional student editors have put together the Get to Know your IEEE Photonics Soci-ety Leadership and the Welcome to My Lab columns. Naznin Akter interviewed Dan Marom, who was a BoG member between 2017 and 2019 and is the current Sec-retary Treasurer. Senta Jantzen interviewed three stu-dents about their laboratories. Please check them out!

My tenure as Photonics Society newsletter editor is ending at the end of this year! Time really does fly. My main goals are to get more people involved in contribut-ing content. Therefore, I encourage you to reach out to me if you would like to become involved with the news-letter. Students, young professionals, and experienced members can inquire about submitting an article!

mailto:[email protected]











http://www


President’s ColumnCARMEN S. MENONI

Upon my return from the IEEE Board Series in late February, I reflected on giving our community a glimpse of the large en-terprise and endeavors of the IEEE, the parent organization to the Photonics Society. As you know, our Society is a vital part of the IEEE providing access to a large technical community dedicated to photonics science and technology.

IEEE provides our Society an infrastructure and intercon-nects us with other cross-discipline IEEE Societies and tech-nical activities, as well as products, educational services and membership efforts. Let’s take an example from publications, an area that I am very familiar with after serving over 10 years as a voting member of the IEEE Publications, Services, and Products Board. This internal IEEE board provides the ‘plat-form and framework’ for publications, both print and online. However, the Photonics Society manages and administers the ‘technical content process’ of its publications, through its own editorial boards.

The costs of publications are bundled and offered in the form of a package to universities and other organizations and one of the most recent updates to this product is ‘Read & Publish’, in which the costs of open access charges to authors and the costs of print are bundled together. To the mem-bers of our community, it means a reduced cost to publish open access in IEEE Journals. Over the last year accelerated by Plan S, an initiative for open-access science publishing that was launched by a consortium of major national research agencies and funders in Europe, the IEEE Technical Activi-ties department started over 13 new open access journals and now contributes over 100 hybrid journals. Conversely, the Photonics Society had been at the forefront of IEEE already, as we were the first to start a Hybrid Open Access Journal,

the IEEE Photonics Journal, which seven years ago transi-tioned to gold access.

More recently, new broad open access journals have been released, as is the case of IEEE Access that has a special section on Photonics. Associate Editors from our Society have been assigned to oversee the quality of this section. The Photon-ics Society also joined the Council of Superconductivity, the Magnetics Society, Communications Society, Signal Processing Society and others in the establishment of IEEE Transactions of Quantum Engineering (TQE), an open access journal that publishes “regular, review, and tutorial articles based on the engineering applications of quantum phenomena, including quantum computation, information, communication, soft-ware, hardware, devices, and metrology.”

Correspondingly, the IEEE Photonics Society is also a finan-cial co-sponsor of an inaugural IEEE Quantum Week (13–16 October 2020) that aims to showcase quantum research, prac-tice, applications, education, and training within the multi-disciplinary quantum computing and engineering field. This includes programming systems, software engineering meth-ods, algorithms, benchmarks, hardware, architectures, hybrid computing, machine learning and more. The IEEE’s Future Directions department devised this effort in conjunction with a new IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20).

There are other new products that our members have avail-able through IEEE, a new archive service TechRxiv and Data-Port. These tools are facilitating the visibility of our work. For example, uploading a manuscript in TechRxiv, makes it in-stantly visible and citable because it receives a Document Iden-tification Number (DOI), which is then modified when the

PublicationProducts

and Services

EducationalActivities

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paper is published. Similarly, DataPort provides the platform to store data that can be linked to a paper, in turn, to be used by others. The portal to publications is IEEE Xplore, which is accessed even if other search engines are used. Such a product serves to the Societies’ benefit, because the IEEE returns a por-tion of the profits made in downloads. This is also the case for conference proceedings.

While there is an IEEE overhead charged to all societies to support publications and conferences, there is a portion of the profit generated by all products that is returned to the Societ-ies, as the IEEE is a non-profit organization. Our Society, in turn, invests its portion of the profit back into the community. For example, we have implemented a large effort to support student grants for participation in our flagship conference, the IEEE Photonics Conference, that every year brings together our members working on the broad spectrum of photonics technologies.

As such, our surplus in 2019 also allowed the Society to support (49) chapter educational seed grants, (21) IEEE Wom-en in Photonics programs, (5) Winter/Summer Schools, (17) grassroots IEEE Young Professionals events, (3) major IEEE Student Congresses, (4) global innovation fairs, humanitarian missions, professional development resources and more. Our hope in 2020, and beyond, is to continue to invest in com-munity programs and products, large and small, that can bring added benefit to our members.

The Photonics Society, and all Societies within the IEEE, need to report back on and justify all of their community efforts. While we can enjoy the freedom of having an infra-structure to create new products and opportunities to sup-port our technical community, the Society has to follow the process and requirements driven by the parent IEEE. For example, if we were to financially co-sponsor a conference, contracts would need to be approved by IEEE Legal and IEEE Meetings, Conferences and Events (MCE). This is the case for the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), which is technically and financially co-sponsored by the IEEE Photonics Society, IEEE Communications Society, and our external, sister-society, The Optical Society (OSA). Likewise, new publications follow a process of approval that can be lengthy and that can add iner-tia to our efforts to compete with other professional societies.

Within the IEEE, the Photonics Society is prominently rec-ognized, essentially for its agility and innovative methodolo-gies. This is consistent with the fact that the IEEE Photonics Society ‘brings light’ to the organization. However, our voice is 1 out of 39 Societies and seven technical councils represent-ing the wide range of IEEE interests. To make our voice more loudly heard, it is important that our dedicated members and leaders in the community fill positions on the many boards, including editorial boards, and committees of the larger IEEE’s infrastructure.

This is especially important for the IEEE Fellows Commit-tee, whereby the fate of our candidates is decided by judges from all of the societies. This year, Leda Lunardi, one of our members and a photonics community leader, will be chairing the IEEE Fellows Committee. Additionally, in 2021-2022, Dalma Novak, 2014-2015 IEEE Photonics Society President, will have a voice within the IEEE Board of Directors as Divi-sion X Director, division in which our Society and 5 others serve under.

Ultimately my message is, working harmoniously with the IEEE and with our associated IEEE Societies increases our visibility and thus our branding. Together we, the ‘One IEEE’, are part of a community of over 422,000 members in more than 160 countries. Nevertheless, to further our interests within this large, global community, it is im-perative that our IEEE Photonics members contribute to all of the member-driven activities both at the Society and IEEE levels.

If you, a member or prospective member, would like to serve the greater good of our community and the IEEE, I implore you to do so. It’s as easy as reaching out to the IEEE Photonics Executive Office for more information, at [email protected], on how to volunteer. The Society’s Board of Governors, committee chairs, local chapters and staff are here to help you build and/or navigate your IEEE volunteer career.

Warmly,Carmen S. Menoni

Colorado State [email protected]



Whether the coming capacity crunch of the global fiber-optic network [1] is behind the corner or not is hard to judge, how-ever one fact is clear: new scaling approaches for the optical transport are necessary to accommodate the ever increasing demand for data traffic. Space-division multiplexing (SDM) seems to be the most promising candidate solution, as it ap-pears from Shannon’s famous formula,

C = NB log(1 + SNRm),

which shows that for a point-to-point communication link, the achievable transmission rate scales linearly with the number of spatial modes N, and only logarithmically with the signal-to-noise ratio per mode SNRm. Capacity scales linearly also with the fiber bandwidth B, but while the available bandwidth is limited, the number of spatial light-paths in principle is not [2]. On the other hand, the question of which implementa-

tion of the SDM paradigm is the most effective does not have a simple answer, thereby leaving room for research endeavors in all directions.

A special approach that has been researched during the past decade is the one based on the use of special fibers, such as multi-mode fibers (MMFs) and multi-core fibers (MCFs). Impressive transmission records have been reported from around the world, demonstrating the great potential of these fiber types [3]–[6] and calling for the next step: deploying SDM fibers to move from in-lab experiments to field trials!

At the University of L’Aquila, in the Italian region of Abruzzo, we had a unique opportunity to make it happen. In 2009, the city was affected by a major earthquake, which caused 309 casualties and devasted the historical downtown area, one of the largest and most beautiful in Italy [7]. The tragical event enforced the search of ways to revive the city

Towards Space-Division Multiplexed Transmission: The World-Wide First and Unique Testbed with Deployed Special Fibers for the Photonics CommunityCristian Antonelli1, Andrea Marotta2, Fabio Graziosi2, and Antonio Mecozzi1

1Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy.2Department of Information Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy.

Research Highlight

Figure 1. Map of the fiber-optic infrastructure. The shorter (red) ring is deployed in a multi-service under-ground tunnel in the his-torical downtown aera. The longer (blue) ring consists of traditional ducts surrounding the urban area of L’Aquila.


and it became clear that culture and innovation should be the inspiring principles. With a smart-city model in mind, this approach transformed the city under reconstruction into a broadband open laboratory, spanning the domains of civil engineering, cultural heritage enhancement, and informa-tion and communication technologies. In this context the Italian Government funded project INCIPICT (Innovating City Planning through Information and Communication Technologies) under CIPE resolution no. 135 (December 21, 2012). The project, started in late 2014 and expected to last until December 2021, was funded with 0.25% of the initial reconstruction budget, resulting in approximately 5 M€ (the actual reconstruction already exceeded the first tranche of 2 billion Euros and much is still to be done). Also, thanks to

this project the city of L’Aquila has been selected to host the 5G Italian Trial (2017-2020).

The goal of INCIPICT (http://incipict.univaq.it/) is to de-velop various ICT technologies within the smart-city paradigm [8], with three main use cases:

1) Structural monitoring of buildings;2) Building Automation/Energy Efficiency model-based

disaster-resilient;3) Enhancement of cultural heritage through ICT

The core of the project is an experimental fiber-optic infra-structure. On the one hand, the goal of this infrastructure is to build a metropolitan aera network connecting key-institutions of the city, as well as to support innovative wireless technolo-gies developed to provide advanced mobility services through an ad-hoc middleware. On the other hand, the fiber-optic in-frastructure is an intrinsically unique testbed for optical com-munication technologies.

The ambitious plan of deploying SDM fibers started with the establishment of two key-partnerships, one with Sumito-mo Electric, and another with Prysmian Group, which joined project INCIPICT by supplying multi-core fibers and multi-mode fibers, respectively, in the form of donations to the Uni-versity of L’Aquila. Thanks also to a favorable synergy with the city municipality, the deployment of the multi-core fiber cable was successfully completed in May 2019, whereas the multi-mode fiber cable is in the process of being deployed. The SDM fiber cables form two optical rings, as shown in Fig. 1. The shorter ring of about 6 km is hosted in the urban underground multi-service tunnel (the red ring in the figure), whereas the longer ring of about 20 km includes about 14 km of traditional ducts (the blue ring in the figure). The asset of SDM fibers is composed as follows.

Multi-core fiber cable. The MCF cable is a 6.29-km long jelly-filled loose-tube cable with an outer diameter of 6 mm, air-blown into a high-density polyethylene anti-rodent microduct with a 10-mm inner diameter and 12-mm outer diameter. The cable accommodates 18 MCFs of three different types in total—twelve strands of coupled-core four-core fibers, four strands of uncoupled-core four-core fibers, and two strands of uncoupled-core eighth-core fibers. Out of the twelve coupled-core fibers, eleven were

Figure 2. Left: Inspection of the underground tunnel (September 2018). Center: Deployment of Sumitomo MCF cable (May 2019). Right: Prysmian MMF cable drums ready for deployment (in progress).

Figure 3. Top: Foreshortening of Palazzo Camponeschi, the rectorate building that hosts the Laboratory of Optics and Pho-tonics giving access to INCIPICT SDM infrastructure. Bottom: Tape-cut at the grand opening of the Laboratory of Optics and Photonics.

http://incipict.univaq.it/


spliced together to form a single span of 69.2 km. More details on the MCFs specs and properties are available in [9].

Multi-mode fiber cable. The MMF cable is a 20-km cable with an outer diameter of 13 mm, a central strength member of glass-fibers reinforced plastic material, tubes of thermo-plastic material containing the optical fibers and filled with a suitable water tightness compound. The cable is deployed for about 6 km of its length in the under-ground tunnel in the same path as the MCF cable, and for the remaining 14 km in traditional ducts deployed around the city cen-ter. The cable accommodates eight identical graded-index fibers supporting fifteen spatial modes [10] of which five are spliced together to form a single span of about 100 km. The other fibers can all be addressed individually also at a mid-point distant 6 km from one end of the cable and 14 km from the other end.

The deployed fibers can be accessed from the Laboratory of Optics and Photonics, which is located in Palazzo Camponeschi, a magnificent XVII-century building in the earth of the histori-cal downtown. Palazzo Camponeschi hosts the university rec-torate, and was fully renovated after the 2009 earthquake. The grand opening of the Laboratory of Optics and Photonics took place on June 6th 2019, at the presence of the Japanese Ambas-sador, representatives of Sumitomo Electric, and representative of the Italian Government. It continued on the following day with the workshop “Deployed Multi-Core Fibers in L’Aquila: Space-Division Multiplexing and beyond,” with the enthusiastic participation of friends and colleagues involved in research on SDM around the world.

At the University of L’Aquila we strongly believe that our unique resource should be shared with the entire optical com-munications community, surely to attract research funding through joint research proposals (several have been funded al-ready), but also directly for exciting field trials. The format that we have in mind is straightforward: Ship to L’Aquila the equipment that we don’t have, come and perform your experiment in our unique infrastructure with us! With this approach in mind,

we are accumulating more and more great experiences. The following sections describe the impressions of researchers that performed experiments in our SDM testbed.

Sumitomo ElectricThe MCF cable testbed in L’Aquila is the first SDM fiber testbed actually deployed in the real world. We are very for-tunate to have the opportunity to participate in this col-laboration with the University of L’Aquila from the very early stage, to realize the field-deployed MCF testbed and validate the MCFs can function very well in the field. The data that we collected in our field trial in May 2019 were presented in a post-deadline paper at OECC 2019 in Fu-kuoka (Japan) [9].

The testbed is waiting for your field trials and experiments in the city center of L’Aquila, a very comfortable place to visit,

Figure 4. The workshop on SDM that took place in L’Aquila on June 7th 2019, the day after the grand opening of the Laboratory of Optics and Photonics of INCIPICT.

Figure 5. Tetsuya Hayashi (Sumitomo) while connectorizing and evaluating the MCF cable with Sumitomo Electric engineers.


surrounded by many historical buildings with the lab, hotels, and restaurants within short walking distance. By Tetsuya Hayashi

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)NICT is Japan’s sole national research and Development Agency specializing in the field of information and commu-nications technology and along with Japanese companies such as Sumitomo Electric, Furukawa Electric and KDDI research labs has been working on SDM technologies for many years. In particular NICT researchers have spent a lot of effort study-ing the physical characteristic of uncoupled MCFs but always in spooled fibers in laboratory conditions. Hence, NICT re-searchers were keen to compare these measurements with measurements of the installed fibers in L’Aquila. On both the 4 and 8 core MCFs, long-term measurements of how much the signals in different cores interact with each other (inter-core crosstalk) and how much the propagation delay between signals in different cores (intercore skew) changes over time. Knowledge of the behaviour of these parameters in installed fibers is crucial to understand how MCF systems can operate and what additional advantages may be gained from system

features such as shared signal process-ing between spatial channels. Two pa-pers presenting some of collected data have been accepted for oral presentation at OFC 2020 and CLEO 2020.

The researchers were also happy to en-joy excellent food, nature and ice-cream of L’Aquila and the Abruzzo region. By Ben Puttnam and Ruben Luis

Ben Gurion University The city of L’Aquila, has been chosen to host the INCUBANDO (INCU-Bate ANd Do) project (https://www .incubando.it/), a bilateral project be-tween Israel and Italy, supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, thanks to its

unique concentration of technologies including 5G and fiber infrastructure. At the same time, L’Aquila represents recon-struction, challenge, and opportunities for innovative start-ups. Within this mainframe, researchers from Pisa, L’Aquila University, and Tel Aviv University jointly developed, dur-ing the 3-year project, the environment for generating, hosting, and accelerating new ideas. As a first demonstration, a joint activity by Ben Gurion University of Israel and CNIT of Pisa was performed in the Laboratory of Optics and Pho-tonics of INCIPICT in L’Aquila. The purpose of this joint ef-fort was to experimentally demonstrate and validate a novel concept of multi-wavelength coherent addition which yields very strong optical processing gain. The demonstrated scheme achieved all-optical encryption and steganography transmission with error-free operation over extreme link bud-get. Furthermore, with the use of L’Aquila’s newly deployed multi-core fiber infrastructure, a real field trial was performed over 6 km of multi-core fiber installed within the city. The demonstrated technology may be highly useful for multiple applications, such as high-speed communication, sensitive transmission of financial, medical or social media-related in-formation, without the risk of hackers getting their hands

Figure 7. The two teams of Dan Sadot from Ben Gurion University (Beersheba, Israel) and of Luca Potì from CNIT, the Italian inter-university consortium for telecommunications (Pisa, Italy).

Figure 6. Left: Ben Puttnam (NICT) and Andrea Marotta (UnivAQ) setting up the first NICT experiment in the Laboratory of Optics and Photonics. Right: Cristian Antonelli, Andrea Ma-rotta, Ben Puttnam and Antonio Mecozzi enjoying ice-cream in downton L’Aqula.

https://www.incubando.it/

https://www.incubando.it/


onto the information. The field trial ended with a workshop which was organized for the dual purpose of dissemination but also for networking with Italian and international industrial and production environments. Complementary to the techni-cal experiment, it was an exciting experience to walk through the old city of L’Aquila, observing the renovation process of the beautiful old and partially damaged buildings, enjoying the authentic and high class restaurants, and interacting with the very friendly and helpful hosts from L’Aquila University. By Dan Sadot and Luca Potì

Nokia Bell Labs—Crawford HillNokia Bell Labs has pursued Space-Division multiplexing in coupled core fiber for almost 10 years in collaboration with Sumitomo Electronic Industries. Prior to this testbed, our lab in Crawford Hill was one of the few places where you could perform a space-division multiplexed experiment due to avail-ability of special fiber and the high cost of telecommunica-tions equipment. The testbed in L’Aquila will have all the equipment available for researchers around the world to con-duct experiments!

We took a trip in early February 2020 to conduct a systems experiment over the 4-core coupled core fiber to see how well

a field deployed SDM fiber behaves. The unique transmission properties from couple core fiber relies on sophisticated mixing and coupling between signals injected into different cores. Con-cerns were therefore present to whether the fiber would maintain the same promising characteristics when cabled and deployed in the field. We also measured the transfer matrix of the SDM fibers deployed in the cable to study their respectively transfer characteristics. Long term measurements were also performed to gain understanding about the temporal dynamics of deployed SDM fibers, a unique possibility enabled by this new testbed. More importantly, we meet with all the Italian researchers, dis-cussed collaborations, learned all about Italian food (perhaps ate too much of it), and had a chance to do a few hikes and go skiing. By Nick Fontaine, Mikael Mazur, and Roland Ryf

The city of L’Aquila: Many Reasons to Visit, Beyond SDM Known as the green region of Europe, Abruzzo is a region of central Italian, and its territory rich of green mountains and charming landscapes extends from inland to the Adriatic Sea. It hosts four National Parks, the most famous of which is the Abruzzo National Park, and boasts numerous natural treasures. Cities and picturesque villages perched on mountains or

Figure 8. Left: Nick Fontaine (Bell Labs), Cristian Antonelli (UnivAQ), and Roland Ryf (Bell Labs) while setting-up an SDM-MIMO experiment in January 2020. Center: Bell-Labs experiment team at the entrance of Palazzo Camponeschi, the rectorate building where the lab is located. Right: Luca Palmieri (University of Padova) discussing with Nick Fontaine (Bell Labs).

Figure 9. Left: Cristian Antonelli (UinvAQ), Ruben Soares Luis (NICT), and Andrea Marotta (UnivAQ) at the lake of Scanno, one of the most photographed villages in Italy. Center: Mikael Mazur (Bell Labs) at the foot of Gran Sasso mountain. Right: Antonio Mecozzi (UnivAQ), Peter Winzer, Mark Shtaif (Tel Aviv University), Stefano Ragazzi (Director Gran Sasso Labs), and Cristian Antonelli (UnivAQ) visiting Gran Sasso Labs.


lying in tablelands and valleys never fail to enchant visitors with their beauty.

The city of L’Aquila (70,000 residents), founded as such af-ter the Roman empire in the thirteen century, is the regional capital of Abruzzo and boasts a unique artistic and cultural her-itage. Its location is strategic for tourism. Nearby mountains, which include the highest mountain in the Apennines—Gran Sasso D’Italia—offer excellent hiking opportunities at all lev-els and become attractive ski resorts in the winter, while prox-imity to the Adriatic coast provides easy access to the sea. The province of L’Aquila counts many of the most beautiful Italian towns and villages according to the association “I Borghi più belli d’Italia,” founded in 2001 with the aim of valorizing and promoting the great historic, artistic and cultural heritage of Italian small centers.

Food, agriculture, and breeding constitute another special excellence of the entire region of Abruzzo, with locally pro-duced wines being exported all over the world. Field-grown saffrain from L’Aquila is renowned world-wide (proudly con-sidered the best in the world by the producers consortium) and is just one of the many local Registered-Trademark prod-ucts. This situation makes local restaurants alwais a win-win experience!

The city of L’Aquila is also unique for scientists. The Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso is the largest underground research center in the world. Situated below the Gran Sasso mountain, it hosts particle-physics research by the national institute for nuclear physics, in tight collaboration with the most relevant research centers on particle physics in the world. The mountain covers the experimental halls with about 1400 meters of rock, thereby shielding the experiments from noisy cosmic rays. Connected to the Gran Sasso Labs is the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI, https://www.gssi.it/), which was funded after the 2009 earthquacke to reinforce the educational vocation of the city of L’Aquila [11]. The GSSI attracts inter-national students from all over the world and offers advanced PhD programs in physics, mathematics, computer science and social sciences.

About the University of L’AquilaEstablished in 1952, the University of L’Aquila is a public teaching and research institution offering a full range of aca-demic programs including biotechnologies, sciences, econom-ics, engineering, education, humanities, medicine, psychology, and sport sciences. With 7 departments, UnivAQ offers their 20,000 enrolled students 68 degree courses, 9 research doc-torate programs, specialization schools, specializing-master courses, and vocational courses.

CONTACTS—Laboratory of Optics and Photonicis of INCIPICTThe key-people involved in the Laboratory of Optics and Pho-tonics are Cristian Antonelli, Andrea Marotta, and Antonio

Mecozzi. Visit or website for contact information: http://incipict .univaq.it/lab-about/

References [1] A. R. Chraplyvy, “The coming capacity crunch,” European

Conference on Optical Communication 2009 (ECOC09), plenary talk (2009).

[2] P. J. Winzer and D. T. Neilson, “From Scaling Disparities to Integrated Parallelism: A Decathlon for a Decade,” in Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 1099-1115, 1 March1, 2017. doi: 10.1109/JLT.2017.2662082

[3] B. Puttnam, G. Rademacher, R. Luís, T. Eriksson, W. Klaus, Y. Awaji, N. Wada, K. Maeda, S. Takasaka, and R. Sugizaki, “0.715 Pb/s Transmission over 2,009.6 km in 19-core cladding pumped EDFA amplified MCF link,” in Optical Fiber Communication Conference Postdeadline Papers 2019, (Optical Society of America, 2019), paper Th4B.1.

[4] T. Kobayashi, M. Nakamura, F. Hamaoka, M. Nagatani, H. Wakita, H. Yamazaki, T. Umeki, H. Nosaka, and Y. Miyamoto, “35-Tb/s C-band Transmission over 800 km Employing 1-Tb/s PS-64QAM signals enhanced by Com-plex 8 × 2 MIMO Equalizer,” in Optical Fiber Commu-nication Conference Postdeadline Papers 2019, (Optical Society of America, 2019), paper Th4B.2.

[5] R. Ryf, J. C. Alvarado-Zacarias, S. Wittek, N. K. Fon-taine, R. Essiambre, H. Chen, R. Amezcua-Correa, H. Sakuma, T. Hayashi, and T. Hasegawa, “Coupled-Core Transmission over 7-Core Fiber,” in Optical Fiber Com-munication Conference Postdeadline Papers 2019, (Opti-cal Society of America, 2019), paper Th4B.3.

[6] R. Ryf et al., “High-Spectral-Efficiency Mode-Multiplexed Transmission Over Graded-Index Multimode Fiber,” 2018 European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC), Rome, 2018, pp. 1-3. doi: 10.1109/ECOC.2018.8535536

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/arts/24abroad .html

[8] C. Antonelli et al., “The City of L’Aquila as a Living Lab: the INCIPICT Project and the 5G Trial,” 2018 IEEE 5G World Forum (5GWF), Silicon Valley, CA, 2018, pp. 410-415. doi: 10.1109/5GWF.2018.8517089

[9] T. Hayashi et al., “Field-Deployed Multi-Core Fiber Tes-tbed,” 2019 24th OptoElectronics and Communications Conference (OECC) and 2019 International Conference on Photonics in Switching and Computing (PSC), Fu-kuoka, Japan, 2019, pp. 1-3. doi: 10.23919/PS.2019. 8818058

[10] P. Sillard et al., “Low-Differential-Mode-Group-Delay 9-LP-Mode Fiber,” in Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 425-430, 15 Jan.15, 2016. doi: 10.1109/JLT.2015.2463715

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/world/europe/from-laquila-quakes-rubble-an-academic-birth.html

https://www.gssi.it/

http://incipict

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/arts/24abroad

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/world/europe/from-laquila-quakes-rubble-an-academic-birth.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/world/europe/from-laquila-quakes-rubble-an-academic-birth.html


In the day-to-day operation of a photonics startup, or any other business for that matter, financial statements are a fundamental tool to understand the health of the company. Engineers do not generally get formal training on this topic and must learn how to read and interpret financial statements on the go. The intent of this article is to help engineers that have become budding businesspeople in this learning process.

There are three main financial statements:• Balance Sheet• Income Statement• Cash Flow Statement

Balance Sheets show what a company owns and what it owes at a fixed point in time.

Income Statements show how much money a company made and spent over a period of time.

Cash Flow Statements show the exchange of money between a company and the outside world, also over a period of time.

This is an important first distinction to keep in mind. Bal-ance Sheets are a snapshot of the company value at an instant in time. Income Statements and Cash Flow Statements cover financial transactions over a period of time.

This article will discuss Balance Sheets in detail. We will discuss Income Statements and Cash Flow State-ments in detail in the next article of this series, to be published in June.

In order to make the discussion more practi-cal, we will follow the story of Nortel Networks from 1997 to 2001 as an example. Nortel Net-works Corporation was one of the dominant suppliers of telecommunications equipment in the 20th century with worldwide presence. In the year 2000, as a major participant in the “telecom bubble” burst, Nortel self-destructed, with tens of thousands of people losing their jobs and investors losing billions of dollars. How did this happen? We can gain some in-sight by evaluating Nortel’s financial state-ments for that critical period and in the process learning how to read and interpret these finan-cial documents. We will first provide some background, describing the events that un-folded at Nortel at that time and we will then proceed to learn from Nortel’s financial state-ments. We will discuss their Balance Sheets in this article, followed by Income Statements and Cash Flow Statements in the next article, as previously indicated. This article describes the events that occurred at Nortel based on an

extensive report published by The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper, in November 2001 and updated in April 2018 [1].

Nortel—The story Nortel Networks Corporation was founded in 1895 in Montre-al, Quebec, as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Com-pany. It changed its name to Northern Telecom in 1976 and Nortel Networks in 1995. The company saw several periods of rapid growth, particularly starting in 1977 with the intro-duction of its Digital Multiplex System (DMS) line of central office telephone switches. The continuous addition of solidly designed optical communications networking products fueled growth in the 80’s and 90’s, to the point where Nortel was one of the top developers, manufacturers and suppliers of telecom-munication equipment in the world, particularly optical com-munications equipment.

John Roth was appointed Nortel’s President and CEO in late 1997. When he took the helm, he inherited a com-pany with healthy revenue and earnings growth and sol-id cash flow. But he and his team saw a way to make it grow faster yet, by buying their way into other areas of the

Industry Engagement

Life at a Photonics Startup: Lessons LearnedTopic: Financial Statements—The language of businessA regular column by Daniel Renner

Typical Nortel DMS-100 telephone central office switch installation.


communications networking world and chasing sales from the young, flush companies with “telecom bubble” business plans, based on good intentions but with no connection to reality. This was a common practice for large telecom companies in the heady days of the “telecom bubble” in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.

The initial apparent effect of Mr. Roth’s strategy was startling success. From 1994 to 1997—when he was named CEO—Nortel’s compound annual revenue growth rate was an enviable 20 percent. From 1998 to 2000, it was an astonish-ing 25 per cent. For one Nortel salesman, that frenzied period culminated in September of 2000, when he got a call from a washed-up entrepreneur who wanted a slice of the “telecom bubble” and thought he could talk Nortel into financing his plans. “The guy was on welfare,” said the salesman, who un-fortunately discovered this only after reviewing a hastily con-cocted business plan in the hopeful tycoon’s kitchen. Definite signs of a bubble!

The great telecom bubble was inflated by a confluence of events that date back to the mid-eighties and early nineties, when governments started to introduce long-distance compe-tition to the telecom industry. The deregulation process took several years and was largely completed by the mid-nineties, with rules allowing competition in local, long distance, mobile and data services.

The advent of the Internet really got the market drooling. Entrepreneurs already coveting the profits of sleepy phone mo-nopolies now had even better reasons to get into the commu-nications business: the untold revenues a digital society might unlock. They had the plans, and now—thanks to an ample supply of risk-tolerant seed money—they had the means to get started.

An abundance of capital, a lack of skepticism and a sexy story that’s easy to believe, even if the outcome is impossible to predict, make for a dangerous combination.

For a while, though, life was beautiful for everyone involved in the sector. Nortel suddenly had a batch of new customers with lots of money to spend. Traditional customers were also beefing up their capital spending.

But well before the peak, there were skeptics who saw through the rosy optimism and tried—largely in vain—to point out that the appearance of disruptive technology in a deregulated market, such as optical communication networks, always follow the same pattern: Competition spurs capital spending, which creates excess capacity, which guarantees price wars, which kill off the weak and damage the industry, stifling profits and choking off new investment, until a second more seasoned cycle of capital spending takes the new technol-ogy to full fruition. Sometimes even further cycles are required to reach industry stability.

By the beginning of 2000, the doubts were confirmed. Big money investors realized that the demand assumptions in “telecom bubble” business plans were far too optimistic. They reacted by cutting off the funding, the fuel driving Nortel’s phenomenal growth. In spite of that, Nortel would maintain its aggressive forecasts for almost a year.

Although most investors were oblivious to the drying capi-tal pools, some of the equipment makers were not. Other tele-communication equipment manufacturers acknowledged the industry’s downturn months before Nortel. In October, the company warned that its revenues would fall far short of fore-casts for the year but denied that it was because of softening demand, insisting that it was a problem with supply. Nortel finally admitted the drastic downturn in the telecom sector in February 2001.

Nortel’s acquisition strategy severely taxed the compa-ny’s capital stock. The company spent 972 million shares on acquisitions and assumed stock option plans amounting to a potential 161 million shares between early 1998 and early 2001. Together, these extra shares added more than 50 percent to Nortel’s diluted stock outstanding. However, most of the firms acquired in this process had no sales. While the value of the stock issued was $32.1 billion, the total tangible net worth of the companies acquired was only $1.1 billion.

By aggressively writing off most of these investments in mid-2001, Nortel acknowledged that it had overpaid for them. It wasn’t the only technology company to make such admissions, but its write-offs were among the biggest. In hind-sight, of course, it’s easy to criticize. But even at the time, there were doubts. One of the owners of an early Nortel acquisition says that the purchase of his company was “dubious. There was a lot of hype back then.”

Besides perhaps breaching unwritten protocol, there is nothing technically wrong with a CEO enthusing over his company’s stock. Nor is there anything technically wrong with using reams of shares to buy dozens of companies with no rev-enue, besides the excellent odds that it will prove a colossal waste of shareholders’ money.

The fallout from this story is by now well known. Investors lost billions and Nortel—the crown jewel of Canada’s technol-ogy industry—eventually disappeared from the map.

After struggling for a few years, on January 14, 2009, Nor-tel filed for protection from creditors, in the United States un-der Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code, in Can-ada under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, and in the United Kingdom under the Insolvency Act 1986. Nortel shares were delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange on June 26, 2009 at a price of $0.185 per share, down from its high of $124.50 in 2000 when it comprised a third of the Toronto composite index. Nortel subsequently sold its remaining assets and wound up business.

Balance SheetsLet us have a close look at the Nortel Balance Sheets over those crucial years, from 1997 to 2001. The tables below show data for the five Balance Sheets corresponding to that period: a snapshot of the company as of December 31st of each one of those years. Typically, when you look at a Balance Sheet it will only show one year, the year being discussed, and the previous year for comparison purposes. This information comes from Nortel Networks Annual Reports [2–4].


NORTEL NETWORKS CORPORATIONConsolidated Balance Sheets

As of December 31st of each year(millions of U.S. dollars)

The Balance Sheet, as you can notice, is divided in two sections:• Assets• Liabilities and Shareholder’s EquityAssets are things that a company owns that have value. This typically means that they can either be sold or used by the com-pany to make products or provide services that can be sold. As-sets are generally listed based on how quickly they will be con-verted into cash. Current assets are things a company expects to convert to cash within one year. Current Assets include:• Inventories. Most companies expect to sell their inventory

for cash within one year. • Cash in the bank and cash to be received within a year

(Accounts receivable)Noncurrent assets are things a company does not expect to con-vert to cash within one year or that would take longer than one year to sell. Noncurrent assets include:• Cash to be received at a future time longer than a year

(Long-term receivables)• Investments that the company makes.• Fixed assets. Fixed assets are those assets used to operate

the business but that are not available for sale, such as facilities and equipment.

• It also includes things that can’t be touched but neverthe-less exist and have value, such as trademarks and patents. These are intangible assets.

• Goodwill is a particular type of intangible asset. Goodwill represents the premium for the market value of a com-

pany over the value supported by identifiable assets of that company. Goodwill is a parameter which is very difficult to quantify and opens a wide door to playing games with the balance sheet, as we will see later for the case of Nortel.

Liabilities are amounts of money that a company owes to others. Li-abilities are generally listed based on their due dates. Liabilities are said to be either current or long-term. Current liabilities are obliga-tions a company expects to pay off within the year. Long-term liabili-ties are obligations due more than one year away.

This can include all kinds of ob-ligations, like money borrowed from a bank to launch a new product, rent for use of a building, money owed to suppliers for materials, payroll a company owes to its employees, en-vironmental cleanup costs, or taxes owed to the government. Liabilities also include obligations to provide

goods or services to customers in the future. So, typically they are also shown in the balance sheet as current liabilities and long-term liabilities.

Minority interest in subsidiary companies corresponds to the equity that minority shareholders hold in a company’s subsidiaries. Until 2007, minority interest information was listed under the liabilities section, as shown in these Nortel Balance Sheets. Starting in 2008, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) introduced a significant change and companies were required to list their minority interest infor-mation under the Shareholder’s Equity section. Accounting is a dynamic art!

Shareholders’ Equity is sometimes called capital or net worth. It is the money that would be left if a company sold all of its assets and paid off all of its liabilities. This leftover mon-ey belongs to the shareholders, or the owners, of the company.

The following formula summarizes what a balance sheet shows:

ASSETS = LIABILITIES + SHAREHOLDERS’ EQUITY

A company’s assets have to equal or “balance” the sum of its liabilities and shareholders’ equity.

A company’s balance sheet is set up like the basic account-ing equation shown above. On the top of the balance sheet, companies list their assets. On the bottom, they list their liabilities and shareholders’ equity.

ASSETS 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001Current assets Cash and cash equivalents Accounts receivable Inventories Other current assets

1,3714,8801,765

531

2,2815,4621,687

887

2,1535,8082,6631,508

1,6448,1984,3362,352

3,5132,9231,5793,747

Total current assets 8,547 10,317 12,132 16,530 11,762

Long-term receivables 334 573 1,356 1,528 1,031

Investments 285 521 1,072 892 253

Plant and equipment 2.040 2,263 2,333 3,419 2,571

Intangible assets and Goodwill 853 5,620 6,295 18,966 3,095

Other assets 495 438 819 845 2,425

Total assets $12,554 $19,732 $24,007 $42,180 $21,137

LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS’ EQUITY 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001Current liabilities 4,883 5,893 7,101 9,058 9,457

Long-term liabilities 2,129 2,185 3,834 4,013 6,219

Total liabilities 7,012 8,078 10,935 13,071 15,676

Minority interest in subsidiary companies

132 89 657 804 637

Shareholders’ equity 5,410 11,565 13,072 29,109 4,824

Total liabilities and shareholders’ equity

$12,554 $19,732 $24,007 $42,180 $21,137


Comments on the Nortel Balance Sheets:• A striking observation is how quickly Intangible Assets and

Goodwill built up from 1997 to 2000. This line item went from $853 million in 1997 to $18,966 million in the year 2000! An increase of $18,113 million. Then, it deflated to $3,095 million in 2001. The increase from 1997 to 2000 was driven by over-valuing the “telecom bubble” acquisi-tions. The dramatic decrease in 2001 was caused by the re-alization that these companies were not really that valuable. The Goodwill line decreased further in 2002 and later years. The lesson here is to always be very critical of the values ap-pearing under Intangible Assets and Goodwill!

• Current Assets grew from $8,547 million in 1997 to $16,530 million in the year 2000. This increase of $7,983 million was mostly driven by an increase in Inventories and Accounts receivable. In the year 2000, Nortel was making a lot of equipment that did not sell, given that demand had come down (high Inventories). Or, if the equipment did sell, it was not being paid since the customers were having financial difficulty (high Accounts receiveable).

• Shareholder’s equity grew from $12,554 million in 1997 to $42,180 in the year 2000. An extraordinary increase of $29,626 million! Most of this increase was due to the increase in Intangible Assets and Goodwill plus the increase in current assets, which we have already discussed. So, this increase in Shareholder’s equity was based on over-valuing acquisitions and fabricating equipment for which there was no demand. The Balance Sheet numbers clearly show this issue! Shareholder’s equity was reduced by $21,043 million from 2000 to 2001, as appropriate corrections were made. Balance sheets contain a wealth of information! I hope that

this article has stimulated you to learn more about this topic, which is absolutely necessary to managing a successful pho-tonics startup. If you have any questions or comments please contact me at [email protected]

References[1] Taylor, Fabrice; “The story behind Nortel’s fall”; pub-

lished by The Globe and Mail on November 17, 2001; Updated April 12, 2018.

[2] Nortel Networks; Annual Report 1998.[3] Nortel Networks; Annual Report 2000; Unleashing the

potential of the high-performance Internet.[4] Nortel Networks; Annual Report 2002.

About the ColumnThis is a regular column that explores business aspects of tech-nology-oriented companies and in particular, the demanding business aspects of photonics startups. The column touches on topics such as financing, business plan, product develop-ment methodology, program management, hiring and reten-tion, sales methodology and risk management. That is to say, we include all the pains and successes of living the photonics startup life.

This column is written sometimes by me (Daniel Renner) and sometimes by invited participants, so that we can share multiple points of view coming from the full spectrum of indi-viduals that have something to say on this topic. At the same time, this is a conversation with you, the reader. We welcome questions, other opinions and suggestions for specific topics to be addressed in the future.

The expectation is that this column will turn into a useful source of business-related information for those who intend to start, join, improve the operation, fund, acquire or sell a pho-tonic startup. A fascinating area that I have been one of those lucky to enjoy as a way of living for a long time.

A Bit About MeI (Daniel Renner) grew up in the wil-derness of Chilean Patagonia, which is one of the sources of my quest for adventure and for exploring new ar-eas. In my early twenties I went to the University of Cambridge in England to do a Ph.D. in Opto-Electronics, a new area at the time. Now, decades later, I have lived through the whole

range of experiences that relate to the development, manu-facturing and commercialization of complex photonic devices and systems used in communication, sensor and industrial applications. My experience spans both technical and com-mercialization aspects of photonic products. This experience has included both large and small companies, which gives me a reasonable vantage point to comment on the ups and downs of life in a photonics startup.

I am currently Chief Business Development Officer at Freedom Photonics in Santa Barbara, CA, and I look for-ward to the regular conversation to be carried out through this column!



Get to Know Your IEEE Photonics Society LeadershipDan M. Marom Ph.D Professor and Department Chair of Applied Physics Department at Hebrew University, Israel Secretary Treasurer of IEEE Photonics Society

What is Your Current Profession?I have been an academic since 2005, when I joined the faculty of the Applied Physics De-partment at the Hebrew University of Jerusa-lem in Israel, after working as a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey (then part of Lucent Technologies) for five years. I head the Photonics Devices Lab (yes, the acronym is PDL), which is where my graduate students and postdocs perform ex-periments on the photonic devices and optical subsystems we create. I now also serve as the Department Chair, which is an administrative role that takes up a lot of my time. It’s a re-volving position among the department faculty and now it’s my turn at the helm.

What Does Your Volunteer Leadership Position Cover Within the IEEE Photonics Society? What Challenges Do You Face in Your Role?I just finished my three-year BoG term (2017–2019), giv-ing me the chance to reflect back on the period and its ac-complishments. Going into the term, you’re not really sure what an elected BoG member can do, but the value of elected members comes from the diversity of opinions being heard at the meetings and contributing to the process by which deci-sions get formulated between society officers, staff, and BoG members. That’s why it’s important to voice your opinion and not be afraid to present a dissenting opinion. In the end, everyone in the board room is passionate about photonics and the society’s role in facilitating information exchange, educa-tion and outreach.

Many issues have come up over the course of my three-year BoG term. Some of the more important ones—in my biased opinion—have dealt with membership, publications, and con-ferences. While the society is in great shape, for each of these topics there’s work to be done and changes to be implemented to further improve. Fortunately, I will continue to volunteer for the society and work on these causes, as I am taking over the position of Secretary Treasurer (special thanks to the BoG for their vote of confidence), after Paul Juodawlkis completed his terms of service. Looking forward to this new volunteering role in the Photonics Society, to help strengthen the commu-nity and the society’s services to its membership.

Why Photonics? What was Your “Photonics Moment” or Personal Journey Story? It’s not necessarily about photonics. I’m motivated about prob-lem solving and scientific inquiry, which can provide great

satisfaction, and in this case, photonics is the facilitator. The advantage photonics brings is that it is both a technology with significant commercial value and a developing scientific discipline benefitting from constant improve-ments in fabrication technology. As such, new findings on the scientific front have a pathway towards commercialization, and old problems suddenly have a new solution to be explored.

I have been fortunate to experience many rewarding moments when a solution to a problem that has perplexed me for a while suddenly becomes crystal clear. I can share an example from my early days at Bell Labs, com-

ing straight from grad school. At the time (early 2000), optical networking was in its nascent days and there were two ma-jor efforts taking place at Lucent. The first was a wavelength blocker, with which you can easily implement a line system (two way, east-west) optical channel add-drop architecture. For higher node connectivity the losses quickly accumulate. The other was the LambdaRouter, a large optical cross-connect (OXC) for network nodes. The latter didn’t make much sense to me, as wavelength channels were separated before the OXC meaning that most switching states cannot be addressed any-way due to wavelength incompatibility and the fiber count was huge. From this conundrum the idea of the wavelength-selective switch was born, bringing switching functionality by beam steering to the blocker platform. We were the first to demonstrate the functionality of wavelength-selective switches at OFC 2002, but it took another 5–6 years for the technology to become commercially available and deployed in networks carrying live traffic. By the way, we are witnessing similar is-sues today in the data center space, which can benefit from new switching solutions and network architectures.

What About Our Society’s Mission and Work Really Motivates You?The Society is centered about a discipline, photonics, which we all relate to, and its mission to disseminate information about the latest scientific finding is achieved via its publi-cations and conferences. However, it’s the membership that matters, people from around the globe, professionals and students in training. We must provide our membership the technical home and community to relate to, where everyone is welcomed and can openly exchange information. This is happening through several fantastic initiatives. I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a Distinguished Lecturer and visit chapters and talk to students at places I would have never reached otherwise. At IPC, I sign up for the Mentor–Mentee program which pairs professionals with students in the same

Dan M. Marom


field. It’s a great experience for both parties to learn about each other and hear their experiences.

What Specific Assets Do You Bring to the Table as a Board Member?I think each board member brings his own life experiences and point of view, and that is what’s important. We need to hear the diverse opinions, across international regions, career paths, professional development stages, gender, race, and more. On this particular issue of representation, I’ve headed an ad-hoc committee per the request of (now past) IPS president Jagadish Chennupati, to examine the procedures by which BoG mem-bers get elected. I hope our recommendations will be discussed and implemented soon, which will facilitate the path for new candidates to be placed on the ballot and demonstrate to our membership the value of continued volunteering at the society.

How Would You Advise Members Who Want To Become More Involved in the Society?The Society offers many opportunities for membership in-volvement. It’s best to probably communicate your interest. This can be done by reaching out to journal’s supporting staff and asking to review manuscripts or serve as associate editor, participate in local chapter activities and when there’s no chap-ter then establish one, come to the member lounge at confer-ences and speak to staff and others members there. Social me-dia offers another route. Follow the Photonics Society twitter account and tweet your opinions to various postings, follow other members who share their thoughts, and report about newly published papers. It’s another great route to engage with the society and our membership.

What Advice Would You Give Someone Going Into A Leadership Position For The First Time?If you’ve volunteered for a leadership position, then it implies you either want to contribute back to the society or bring

about change. Write down what you wish to accomplish. Then consider how you can achieve your goals. It’s best to talk to experienced people in similar positions, such as the person who preceded you in the leadership position or the person you’ll be reporting to, to learn from their own experiences. Find out from them how to best succeed and whether your goals are realistic. Even if your goals are lofty, it’s fine. Better to aim too high than low.

How Do You Ensure IEEE Photonics Society and Its Activities Are Aligned With Your Core Values?I think the single most important thing you can do is make yourself heard and voice your opinion. The Photonics Soci-ety is a leader among the IEEE sister societies in its policies and activities and is attuned to its membership desires. If any member has suggestions on how to improve, these can be com-municated to an elected board member or to the society staff. As an example of personal commitment to values, gender rep-resentation is a value I champion when serving as conference organizer. I’ve witnessed the impact this has on young female students considering their career paths.

Tell Us Something Fun About Yourself!Here’s a funny story: When I was in grad school, the laser lab where I worked had two joined optical tables, making an L-shape. When we had additional budget, we wanted to add a third table, making for a U-shape. I placed the order for the table, but I made a mistake in the table joining-plate position. When the new table arrived, the resulting table came out Z-shape (but with 90-degree angles). The optical table assembly was too large for the room, unless it was rotated by about 30 degrees. The end result was a strangely shaped table, placed at a rotation angle inside the room. Every visitor to the lab (to this day) asks about the strange arrangement, so a story was made up on why it was done so deliberately, to create triangu-lar working space on either side of the center arm.


Photonics Worldwide—This is My LabThis is the second edition of our “Photonics Worldwide—This is My Lab” column. In every issue of the IEEE Photonics News-letter, we introduce early career researchers from all around the world and let them explain what fascinates and drives them in their everyday job. This time, we have Kavita from the Univer-sity of Illinois, Vanessa, who is working at DAS Photonics and Dagmawi from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Enjoy the read and get in touch if you want to share your story.

My name is Kavita Desai and I am a second-year graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I conduct research in the Laboratory for Optical Phys-ics and Engineering under Professor J. Gary Eden. I came across this laboratory during my undergraduate studies. The group encouraged me to pursue undergraduate research ex-posing me to the many research projects that are performed. I am so grateful for that opportunity. I loved working in the laboratory and my passion has only continued to grow over the past couple of years. Currently in my research, I also work on several projects which are not related to one another so that I can expose myself to many different areas. In the photo, there are two lasers shown. The first is a pulsed Nd:YAG laser and the other is a dye laser. One project of mine is cre-ating tunable random lasers in polymers for which I use the Nd:YAG laser as a pump. Another project I work on is a collaboration with student in Professor Peter Dragic’s group. We are trying to excite and detect nonlinearities in many different types of fibers using the dye laser. As I continue to work towards my PhD, I am excited to continue my research in the field of lasers.

My name is Dagmawi Alemayehu Bekele and I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). My research involves the design, fabrication and characterization of nanostructured photonic switches. We aim to realize high speed and energy efficient optical com-munication components for use in data centers. With billions of devices being connected to the internet, it is evident that reliability and speed of the communication between these

devices should be guaranteed. As a result, data centers are increasingly being challenged in terms of energy efficiency and speed. Particularly, the energy consumption and the as-sociated CO2 emission level has raised serious environmental concerns. The magnitude of this global challenge is what re-ally drives me to conduct my research.

The photonics department at DTU consists of around 200 international employees including professors, senior re-searchers and PhD students. Our labs are well-equipped and suitable for innovation and research. We also have access to cleanroom facility which allows us to fabricate our nanostruc-tures in-house. For early-career researchers like me, the avail-ability of these unique facilities is highly motivating to do our research. Moreover, the Danish work environment is non-hierarchical and friendly which makes our collaboration fun and very efficient. I am very much happy to be here.

My name is Vanessa Duarte and I am a PhD student in satellite communications. Satellites and space are some-thing that always fascinated me. Having the opportunity of starting my research career from scratch with an idea of a photonic processor capable of miniaturizing the satellite payload and at the same time increasing the capacity was just the amazing. Combining that with all the project team effort and all partners contribution was a key en-abling to find the research fun, useful, and more important,

Kavita Desai

Dagmawi Alemayehu Bekele


knowing that I was contributing to the state-of-art of the new generation of high-throughput communication satel-lites and at the same time clearly what I would like to do.

All of this experience led me to where I am now, work-ing in the satellite company DAS Photonics, in Spain, in H2020 RETINA project, developing photonic proces-sors and other space devices with my team. My trajec-tory passed from research in an institution to research in a company, this made the things more real, but in both cases I could contribute with my knowledge to the next generation of communication satellites.

If you would like to be featured in your lab, please reach out to:

Senta L. JantzenPostgraduate Researcher

Optoelectronics Research CentreUniversity of Southampton

SouthamptonSO17 1BJ, UK

[email protected]

Vanessa Duarte

IEEE Photonics Commitment to Diversity Opportunities

Women in Photonics Scholarships & GrantsMerit-based recognition for outstanding students and early career women in the

photonics community.

Diversity & Inclusion Scholarships & GrantsMerit-based recognition for

student members, young professionals and volunteers championing diversity and

inclusion e�orts in the photonics community.

Multicultural Outreach & Globalization Grants

Grants for chapters and research centers to support academic exchanges and to

address international and cross-cultural scienti�c

understanding.

For more information, email:[email protected]




News

Firstly, please let us wish you all, your friends and your fami-lies all the best during these challenging times. Because of the recent outbreak of COVID-19, cities and countries worldwide are putting into place a number of containment measures that seriously impact the organization of conferences and public events. As a result, many activities that have been planned for the International Day of Light 2020 (IDL 2020) on May 16 will no longer be able to take place as scheduled.

Whilst we appreciate that this will be disappointing, it is essential to prioritize health above all, and we would like to stress to everyone the importance of following all local and na-tional guidelines that are being put into place to safeguard our wellbeing. The International Day of Light website (LightDay .org) outlines some potential alternatives that you may wish to consider. We also want to emphasize that events for IDL can take place at any time in 2020. Please contact us to update your event registration in the global calendar.

IDL 2020 activities, of all kinds, are encouraged to facilitate maximum participation, research and impact worldwide. This in-cludes the implementation of events online, which can also bring the advantage of bringing in a larger audience. The Steering Com-mittee is also happy to share and promote your online events, and how to participate in them, across social media. There are various IDL resources available online, including skilled speakers, videos and activities that you can make use of for your events.

Please regularly check the IDL 2020 website for updates and news items and continue to reach out to us via Twitter (@IDLOfficial), Facebook (@DayOfLight2020) and Instagram (@IDL2020), or by email if you have any questions, to share any ideas and/or resources.

Despite the ongoing challenges, the International Day of Light presents a special opportunity for us to come together for a common celebration!

John Dudley & Joe Niemela

International Day of Light 2020Steering Committee Chairs

The Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC 2020), was held at the San Diego Convention Center March 8–12, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first viable optical fi-ber. The conference was made up of a combination of live and virtual events showcasing technical research, new commercial solutions, and multivendor demonstrations.

This year’s OFC Plenary Session was live-streamed, providing im-portant insights to the broader optical communications community from three respected technical and commercial leaders in the field.

Professor Sir David Payne, director, Optoelectronics Research Cen-tre, University of Southampton, UK explored the role of silica in the future of optical communications, emphasizing its potential and chal-lenging the audience to think differently about ways to tackle technical hurdles.

Dr. Qi Bi, president, China Telecom Technology Innovation Center, CTO, China Telecom Beijing Research Institute provided a lessons-learned overview of China Telecom’s 5G deployment.

“The ever-growing data rate of 5G is expected to revolutionize the way that we live and do business,” Bi said. “Vendors need to think how we can do an integrated approach instead of an independent approach so we can have a much better handle on system integration.”

Dr. Benno Willke, research group leader, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Germany, rounded out the session with a visionary talk that discussed plans for a third-generation of gravita-tional-wave detector.

As it became apparent that travel restrictions would impact the in-person program due to COVID-19, the OFC technical program chairs, Shinji Matsuo, NTT Device Technology Labs, NTT; David Plant, McGill University; and Jun Shan Wey, ZTE, TX, USA, worked together to ensure the OFC program remained accessible and collab-orative for interested parties. Through live-streaming and two-way remote participation, people unable to travel to San Diego remained an integral part of the event.

Message from IDL 2020 Steering Committee to Supporters of the International Day of Light

OFC 2020: Blended In-person & Virtual Conference Offered Global Participation


“OFC 2020 has demonstrated that large conferences can engage participants across the globe utilizing the optical fiber communications technologies developed by experts in the field,” said Wey, Plant and Matsuo. “The research and innovations enabled by the OFC commu-nity have made OFC 2020 the perfect opportunity to run a virtual conference experiment.”

A commemorative event, “Celebrating 50 Years of Light-speed Connections,” was held this year to recognize the importance of bring-ing low-loss optical fiber and room-temperature semiconductor lasers together in 1970 to transform global communications and enable light-speed connections across continents and oceans.

Special programming featured a keynote address by Dr. David Welch, founder and chtief innovation officer of Infinera Corporation, Sunnyvale, California, U.S.A., whose talk gave a glimpse into the near-term future and a show-floor exhibit on the history of fiber optics.

OFC 2021 will continue to serve as the industry’s pre-mier optical communications event, which is set to take place 28 March–1 April in San Francisco. For more information on OFC, visit ofcconference.org. Also, online Exhibitor Announce-ments on new product developments and a variety of recorded talks can be found on the conference’s website.

Excerpts for this article from the Optics.org press release: https://optics .org/news/11/1/121

Distinguished speakers, Willke, Bi and Payne, have their talks via live-stream during the OFC Plenary session, to a global audience.

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The 3rd Annual Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) Meeting, Symposium and Workshop, held on February 20-21, 2020 at SEMI world headquarters, Milpitas, CA was a resounding success. The two-day event, co-organized by IEEE Santa Clara Valley Chap-ters and SEMI, was held to celebrate the release of the HIR 2019 edition released on October 10th and to kick-off the preparation of the HIR 2020 edition.

HIR activities have continued into 2020—sponsored by the IEEE Electron-ics Packaging Society (EPS), SEMI, IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS), IEEE Photonics Society and the ASME EPPD Division, with the intention of expanding the roadmap collaboration to other inter-nal IEEE Technical Societies that share in-terest as well as to organizations outside the IEEE that share a common vision for the roadmap.

Heterogeneous Integration refers to the integration of separately manufactured components into a higher level assembly (SiP) that, in the aggregate, provides en-hanced functionality and improved oper-ating characteristics. The Roadmap serves as a guideline for the global electronics industry of projected technology needs and opportunities for innovation. Current topical areas include: High Performance Computing; Medical; Automotive; Aerospace; Mobile Communications; Photonics; 5G; MEMS; Supply Chain; Thermal; etc.

The HIR Symposium on February 20th featured presenta-tions from all 22 Technical Working Groups (TWG). They were complemented by two plenary speakers. Dr. Predeep Dubey from Intel Parallel Computing Lab spoke on “Virtu-ous Cycle of AI” and Dr. Hong Liu from Google Infrastructure spoke on “The Role of Optics on Computing”.

The HIR Global Advisory Council members, Ajit Manocha gave the opening remarks in the morning, and Nicky Lu did the wrap-up in the afternoon.

The TWG collaboration workshop agenda on February 21st started with a “Chiplet on the Rise Forum” with two speak-ers: Bapi Vinnakota from ODSA and David Kehlet from Intel. This was followed by TWG collaboration sessions for the HIR 2020 edition preparation.

The total attendance of more than 180, included represen-tatives from all 22 TWG teams as well as participation from a broad cross-section from the electronics industry, academia, government and research institutes, demonstrating the increas-ingly high interest and crucial relevancy in the Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap.

The events were sponsored by Google, Cisco, Intel, Promex, ASE Group, Samsung, Silitronics, together with SEMI & IEEE EPS.

To learn more about the reports presented, visit: https://bit.ly/3du4iur

Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) Meetings, Symposium & Workshop

https://bit.ly/3du4iur


Chino Hills, Calif. March 1, 2020 The Photonics Society of Chinese Americans (PSC), a non-profit organization for pro-moting professional exchange among Chinese Americans in the field of photonics, is proud to announce the winners of the Tingye Li Memorial Scholarship Award: Mr. Derek Kita, a Ph.D. student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his exceptional contributions to photonics sensing technology and service to the integrated photonics communi-ty, and Ms. Cong Liu, a Ph.D. student from the University of Southern California (USC), for her excellent research achieve-ment in quantum communications and nonlinear optics.

The winners were selected from many applicants in top photonics-related programs around the world by the Scholar-ship Selection Committee, which is comprised of renowned scientists and business leaders in the field, including Prof. John Bowers (UCSB), Prof. Gee-Kun Chang (Georgia Tech), Dr. Hong Hou (Intel), Dr. Hong Liu (Google), and Prof. Alan Willner (USC).

“Tingye was certainly a brilliant scientist, but he was also a transformative and caring mentor who had significant im-pact in nurturing the growth of young scientists,” said Prof. Alan Willner, a past OSA president and a member of National Academy of Engineering. “I am thrilled to see the establish-ment of this scholarship in honor of Tingye.”

Dr. Xuezhe Zheng, the president of PSC, noted: “Tingye was a long-time supporter of PSC, a life-member of the society and a recipient of PSC Achievement Award. My congratulation goes to the two outstanding graduate students winning the first Tingye Li Memorial Scholarship Awards!”

More About Tingyi Li Memorial Scholarship AwardDr. Tingye Li (7/7/1931-12/27/2012) was a Chinese Ameri-can scientist in photonics. His innovative work at AT&T Bell Labs pioneered the research and application of lightwave com-munication and has had a far-reaching impact on information technology for over four decades. He was a member of the Na-tional Academy of Engineering (1980), Chinese Academy of Engineering (1980), and Academia Sinica (1994). He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the IEEE Baker Prize (1975), IEEE David Sarnoff Award (1979), OSA/IEEE John Tyndall Award (1995), AT&T Science and Technology Medal (1997), IEEE Photonics Award (2004), IEEE Edison Medal (2009), OSA Frederic Ives Medal (1997), and—last but not the least—the PSC Achievement Awards from the Photonics Society of Chinese-Americans (1998).

The scholarship was established in late 2019 to be awarded annually to: (1) honor Dr. Tingye Li for his outstanding con-tributions in the field of photonics, his selfless mentoring of young scientists and his outstanding services to the photonics community; (2) recognize outstanding graduate students in the fields of optics and photonics, including optical commu-

nications, optical sensors, and integrated photonics; and (3) encourage giving back to the photonics/scientific community, emulating what Tingye did by actively participating in com-munity services, and helping and nurturing young scientists to become successful in their careers. This is the first time the named scholarship is awarded. A scholarship committee, appointed by the PSC Board of Directors, is responsible for making announcements, conducting fundraising, and oversee-ing the selection process. The committee is now chaired by Dr. Norman Kwong, with Drs. Xuezhe Zheng and Steve Yao as its members. The scholarship award consists of an award certificate with an achievement citation and an award check of $1000, which may vary from year to year. The recipients will also receive a special invitation to the PSC annual meeting and reception, and a special recognition during the annual meet-ing. The number of winners is capped at two each year.

Any graduate students in any universities and colleges are eligible to be nominated, however, only those with: (1) out-standing academic achievements documented by technical publications or conference presentations in reputable journals or conferences, (2) willingness to serve the scientific communi-ty evidenced by past activities, and (3) strong recommendations from the candidate’s sponsor and advisor, may be selected. The Scholarship Selection Committee comprised of internation-ally renowned scientists and business leaders shall evaluate the achievements and make recommendations to PSC’s Scholarship Committee and the Board of Directors for the final approval.

More About Photonics Society of Chinese Americans (PSC)PSC is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 by a group of scientists and engineers of Chinese Heritage in the city of Los Angeles, with objectives to promote friendships and collabora-tions among Chinese-American engineers and scientists in the field of photonics. PSC frequently conducts the following activi-ties to benefit its members and welcomes all individuals and or-ganizations interested in participating in these activities to join us: (1) Enhancing communication within the society by organiz-ing technical seminars and publishing newsletters and member-ship directory; (2) Conducting technical and dinner meetings during major international conferences, such as OFC/NFOEC, Photonics West, and CLEO/IQEC, for reporting and reviewing new photonics technologies and business/product developments in different parts of the world and for establishing business con-tacts and technical exchanges; (3) Organizing annual conferences to promote photonics education, report new progress in photon-ics, address future photonics marketing directions, and present Achievement Awards to key individuals in the field of photonics.

PSC greatly appreciates the generous donations of the follow-ing sponsors in the past: Accelink, Auxora, Bandweaver, Broad-ex, Emcore, Fibercore, Finisar, GoFoton, General Photonics, Hisense, Hitronics, Hytera, InnoLight, Intel, MRSI Mycronics,

Photonics Society of Chinese Americans Announces the Winners of the First Tingye Li Memorial Scholarship Award


NeuSemi, O-net, Oplink, Oz Optics, QPC Lasers, River Pub-lishing, San-U Optronics, Source Photonics, and Perkins-Coie.

More information can be found at PSC website: www.psc-sc.org.

The following are the photos of the award winners:

Media Contact:Steve YaoPhotonics Society of Chinese Americans (PSC)(909) [email protected]

Ms. Cong Liu (USC) Mr. Derek Kita (MIT) Award Trophies

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 8 7 new members and 18 international members, announced NAE President John L. Anderson today. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,309 and the number of internation-al members to 281.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership hon-ors those who have made outstanding contributions to “en-gineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering lit-erature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.” Election of new NAE members is the culmination of a yearlong process. The ballot is set in December and the final vote for membership occurs during January.

Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during a ceremony at the NAE’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4. A list of the newly elected members and in-ternational members follows, with their primary affiliations at the time of elec-tion and a brief statement of their prin-cipal engineering accomplishments.

The Photonics Society congratulates two members inducted in 2020:

Tsang, Leung, professor, electrical engineering and com-puter science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For contributions in wave scattering and microwave remote sensing theories for satellite missions.

Jagadish, Chennupati, distinguished professor, electronic materials engineering, Australian National University, Can-berra. For contributions to nanotechnology for optoelectronic devices.

For more information on this honor, please visit: https://bit.ly/3bVBni8

Photonics Society Congratulates Members Elected to the National Academy of Engineering

http://www.psc-sc.org

http://www.psc-sc.org


https://bit.ly/3bVBni8

https://bit.ly/3bVBni8


The Photonics Society is pleased to announce two new addi-tions to our Awards Portfolio.

IEEE Photonics Society Laser Instrumentation AwardThe IEEE Photonics Society Laser Instrumentation Award is given to recognize key contributors to the field for develop-ments of laser-based and electro-optical instruments, which lead to the development of innovative systems enabling major new measurements or process capabilities of relevance to appli-cations in industrial, biomedical avionic and metrology fields.

The field(s) to be considered are: classical and Self-Mixing Laser Interferometry, Optical Coherence Tomography, Digital Holography, Diffraction and Interference-based Measuring De-vices like Particle Size Analyzers, Laser Interferometers, Opti-cal Gyroscopes, and Laser Doppler Velocimeters, Measurements of distance and kinematic quantities, realized in either bulk-optics or integrated optics technologies. Measurements for the sole characterization of optical devices or fibers are not eligible.

The award may be given to an individual or group, up to three in number. Previous winners of major IEEE Medals or Field Awards for the same work are not eligible; in the case of a group award, at least one candidate must not have received a major IEEE Award for the same work. Must be an active IEEE/ Photonics Society member.

The Award consists of an honorarium of $1000 and a Certificate. The presentation is made at the IEEE Photonics Conference.

IEEE Photonics Society Technical Skills Educator AwardThe IEEE Photonics Society Technical Skills Educator Award is given to recognize educators specializing in bringing tech-nician and technical skills training within the PHO field of interest to traditionally underserved communities. While candidates teaching at the technical skills level, such as at US community colleges, are targeted, we also welcome ap-plicants from any accredited, degree- or certificate-granting institutions worldwide.

The award will recognize effective, impactful, and innova-tive educators who bring specialized training to communi-ties for whom photonics is not typically viewed as a common educational and career path. Contributions to curriculum and course development, industrial and governmental education programs, textbook development, will all be considered in the award evaluation.

The Awards consists of a certificate of recognition and honorarium equaling $1,500, with an additional $1,000 to-wards travel to attend the IEEE Photonics Conference for the presentation.

Careers and AwardsAnnouncing Two New IEEE Photonics Society Awards


CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

IEEE Photonics Society 2020 Distinguished Service Award

Nomination deadline: 30 April 2020

The Distinguished Service Award was established to recognize an exceptionalindividual contribution of service that has had significant benefit to the membership of the IEEE Photonics Society as a whole. This level of service will often include servingthe Society in several capacities or in positions of significant responsibility. Candidatesshould be members of the Photonics Society. The award is presented at the IEEEPhotonics Conference formerly known as the IEEE Photonics Society Annual Meeting.

Nomination Submission Previous Recipients

https://bit.ly/33twrgB

https://bit.ly/3a0EFPX


IEEE Photonics Society 2020 Graduate Student Scholarship ProgramThe IEEE Photonics Society established the Graduate Stu-dent Scholarship Program to provide Graduate Scholarships to outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of inter-est (photonics, electro-optics, lasers, optics, or closely related fields). Scholarships will be awarded, based on the student membership in each of the main geographical regions:

Americas Europe/Mid-East/Africa Asia/PacificPrize: Up to $10,000 in scholarships are awarded annually. A complimentary conference registration will be available to each scholarship recipient to attend the IEEE Photonics Conference for the award presentation.

Eligibility: Scholarship applicants must be an active IEEE Photonics Society student member pursuing a graduate edu-cation within the Photonics Society field of interest. Students should normally be in their penultimate year of study at the time of after the application is submitted (i.e. those applying in 2020 would normally expect to defend their thesis during 2021).

Schedule: Electronic submissions are now being accepted. Submission deadline is 30 May. The Scholarship recipients will be notified by 30 July of the same year.

Scholarship Application Package Requirements:• Cover letter to include name, address, email, IEEE

member number, expected date of submission of the thesis, and a listing of any activities related to Pho-tonics Society, along with the names and contact information of two references.

• A one-page CV, including all degrees received and dates.• One copy of educational transcripts.• A 300-word statement of purpose describing the

student’s research project and interests. The statement is to include the background to the project, what the student has achieved so far and how the research will be continued and developed by the student over the rest of the project A list of the student’s publica-tions with the most significant paper indicated and a 100-word description of the significance of the paper. Please include IEEE Photonics Society journal publica-tions if any.

• Two reference letters from individuals familiar with the student’s research and educational credentials.

• Note that additional information and submissions over the specified word count will not be forwarded to the evaluat-ing committee.

Apply here: https://bit.ly/32QBgjS For more information contact: [email protected]

2020 Graduate Student Scholarship Program: Applications are Now Being Accepted

Cartoon

https://bit.ly/32QBgjS



Membership

The IEEE Learning Network (ILN) offers hundreds of online courses from across the IEEE, all in one place. The platform al-lows you to advance your career, with most courses offering Con-tinuing Education Units (CEUs) or Professional Development Hours (PDHs). Discounts are also available on select courses if you are an IEEE member or respective Society member.

There is currently a ‘Special Offer’ for IEEE Photonics Soci-ety Members. Users who are Society members can ‘Save 50% Off*’ each of the following courses with the code ILNPSN: “Introduction to Numerical Methods”; “Discover 5G”; and “Responsible Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”.

The platform allows you to stay up-to-date with the lat-est trends in core and emerging technology, such as photonics, 5G networks, artificial intelligence (AI), and more by visiting

the platforms website: iln.iee.org. The IEEE Photonics Society joined the platform as one of its first supportive societies, con-tributing a variety of webinar content and a newly developed e-learning course; prepared to fully launch in Spring 2020.

*Offer expires 30 April 2020. Contact [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns regarding the promotion.

The IEEE Learning Network (ILN): Your Place to Find IEEE Continuing Education

The Kenyatta University Chapter is a newly formed IEEE Photonics Society chapter in Kenya with the assistance of the Kithinji Muriungi, who is the IEEE Photonics Membership Development & Outreach Volunteer in Africa but currently with great focus interest in Kenya. It was formed in Novem-ber 2019 and now has over 20 student members. The chap-ter has five lead volunteers and one graduate member who is the current Chapter Advisor. The chapter has organized 24 events so far: 18 of them being public lecture series, three ma-jor workshops, and three industrial visits. Some of the lecture series included talks on laser and applications in medicine, light sensors and transducers, 5G, and solar PV technology. The workshops include a robotics workshop, IoT workshop, and embedded systems workshop. All these workshops have been a great success, and some ended up attracting over 200 attendees in just one session. The talks attracted up to 120 attendees per session. The workshops were known to be first of their kind in the country and the region and equipped at-tendees with relevant industry 4.0 skills.

Chapter Best Practices: Kenyatta University Chapter, Kenya

Kenyatta University Volunteers during the Photonics Society Chapter Launch.

A group building their robot arm during the robotics workshop.

Trainer showing a group the basics of assembly and linkages.




Group photo of the robotics workshop attendees.

A trainer during the IoT workshop.A group programming their IoT board during the IoT workshop.

Group photo of the attendees of the IoT workshop.


Successful Program ModelsThe Kenyatta University chapter holds a weekly public lecture series on in-dustry 4.0 topics and topics that are of interest to Photonics Society members. The lectures are held on Fridays from 3 pm to 5 pm East African Time. The speakers are chosen within the universi-ty community and a good number com-ing from the industry. If a topic is more aligned to the industry than academic, an expert from the industry is invited to shed light on the same.

The key to sustainability is doing the lecture series on zero budget. This makes it easy to organize. Through our activities, we have secured a partnership with the university, and this has made getting venues and speakers very easy and at no cost. We leverage social media more so twitter to mar-ket the event to ensure maximum attendance. By having the lectures in the afternoon, we take advantage of not so busy Friday afternoon schedule, making it easy to get speakers from the industry.

Our first robotics workshop, which was in partnership with IBM and Gearbox Kenya, together with Women in Engineer-ing (WIE) Kenyatta University, attracted over 200 attendees. The attendees worked in groups and come up with their ro-botic arms by the end of the workshop. This workshop mar-keted the chapter and formed a good foundation for our second workshop that happened three weeks later.

The second workshop was on the Internet of Things (IoT) and was the first of its kind in the country. The workshop was organized in partnership with IBM, Liquid Telecom, AnitaB.org Nairobi Chapter, Warefab Kenya, Numeral IoT, WIE Kenyatta University, and IoT Kenya. The partners fully sponsored the workshop. The workshop attracted 100 at-tendees across Kenya and had few participants coming from the neighboring country, Uganda. The attendees were able to build IoT-based monitoring solutions and deployed them on the IBM Watson IoT Platform through the Sigfox network gateway. This was an exciting experience for the participants

since the workshop provided an end to end solution from the sensor level to the cloud.

The chapter has conducted three significant industrial vis-its. Members visited a 100 kW one axis tracking solar power plant with the help of the patron, Mr. Paul Kanja—Energy En-gineer and Solar Energy Specialist. We also have visited IBM Kenya with the help of Kithinji Muriungi and lastly, Gearbox Kenya, an engineering firm.

The Kenyatta University chapter believes that the com-munity is in the heart of engineering. This makes the chapter strive to serve the community by coming up with community-centered events that are free for all. Also, the chapter partners with other IEEE chapters and local companies to reduce the cost of its activities to make it accessible for all. The chapter encourages volunteering and has the highest number of volun-teers in the IEEE Kenya section.

Special Thanks to Prof. Eng. Martin Nzomo (SB Counselor), Mr. Paul Kanja (Chapter Advisor), Fidel Makatia ( Chapter Chair), Cynthia Thuo ( Chapter Vice-Chair), Francis Kariuki (Lead Pub-licity), Allan Leshao (Chapter Secretary), Willis Otondi (Chapter Treasurer), Terresiah Mburu (Publicity Member), Kithinji Muri-ungi and other volunteers in the section, SB, and chapter for the continued support. Much appreciation also goes to the partner organizations and companies, and IEEE Photonics staff for their endless support in making the chapter keep shining.

Monthly lectures ongoing with mass participation from university students and prospective members.

Outside view of the venue for the robotics workshop.


IEEE Photonics Society Conferences

2020 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO)10-15 May 2020San Jose Convention CenterSan Jose, CAwww.cleoconference.org • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE Optical Interconnects Conference(OI)9-11 June 2020Doubletree by Hilton MontrealMontreal, Quebec Canadawww.ieee-oi.org • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE Photonics Society Summer Topicals Meeting Series (SUM)13-15 July 2020Hilton Los Cabos Beach & Gold ResortCabo San Lucas, Mexicowww.sum-ieee.org • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE Research and Applications of Photonics in Defense Conference (RAPID) 10-12 August 2020Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa Miramar Beach, FL USAwww.ieee-rapid.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 International Conference on Group IV Photonics(GFP)26-28 August 2020 Hotel NHMalaga, Spainwww.ieee-gfp.org

2020 Congress of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) 31 August – 4 September 2020 Technische Universität Dresden Dresden, Germanywww.ico25.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 European Conference on Optical Communications(ECOC)20-24 September 2020Brussels EXPOhttps://ecoco2020.org/• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

IEEE International Semiconductor Laser Conference(ISLC)11-14 October 2020Hotel DorintPostdam, Germanywww.ieee-islc.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE Photonics Conference(IPC) 27 September – 1 October 2020Hyatt Regency VancouverVancouver, BC, Canadawww.ieee-ipc.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE) 12-16 October 2020Denver, Colorado https://qce.quantum.ieee.org

2020 • 2020IEEE Photonics Society Conferences2020 • 2020IEEE Photonics Society Conferences

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http://www.cleoconference.org

http://www.ieee-oi.org

http://www.sum-ieee.org

http://www.ieee-rapid.org

http://www.ieee-gfp.org

http://www.ico25.org

https://ecoco2020.org/

http://www.ieee-islc.org

http://www.ieee-ipc.org

https://qce.quantum.ieee.org


INTERCONNECTS2020OPTICAL

9-11 June 2020Doubletree by Hilton MontrealMontreal, Quebec, Canadawww.ieee-oi.org

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Program Co-Chairs:Liron Gantz,Mellanox Technologies, Israel

Jock Bovington, Cisco, USA

General Co-Chairs:Ashkan Seyedi, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, USA

James Stewart, Facebook, USA

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Registration is now open!General Chair:Michael Brodsky, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, USA

13-15 July 2020Hilton Los Cabos Golf & Beach ResortCabo San Lucas, Mexicowww.ieee-sum.org

SUMMER TOPICALS2020MEETING SERIES

IEEE PHOTONICS SOCIETY

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http://www.ieee-oi.org

http://www.ieee-sum.org


20202-6 AUGUST 2020 | ICC SYDNEYIncorporating the 45th Australian Conference on Optical Fibre Technology (ACOFT) AUSTRALIA

For more information, or to register your interest, visit

www.CLEOPR2020.org

CALL FOR PAPERS OPENSMONDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2019

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The 14th Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics will be held at the International Convention Centre, Sydney, Australia from 2 to 6 August 2020. The Conference will cover all major areas in lasers and optoelectronics. It will include keynotes from world leaders, tutorial sessions, invited and submitted papers, along with workshops on a range of important current topics.

Professor Connie Chang-Hasnain

BERKELEY, USA

Dr Simon Poole

FINISAR, AUSTRALIA

Professor Donna Strickland

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO,

CANADA

Professor Din Ping Tsai

ACADEMIA SINICA,

TAIWAN

Professor Hatice Altug

ECOLE PLOYTECHNIQUE

FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE,

SWITZERLAND

Professor Kai Bongs

UK QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY

HUB FOR SENSORS

AND METROLOGY,

UNITED KINGDOM

http://www.CLEOPR2020.org


Research and Applications of Photonics in Defense

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Registration is now open!

General Co-Chairs:Monica Allen, Ph.D, Air Force Research Laboratory

Jeffery Allen, Ph.D,Air Force Research Laboratory

10-12 August 2020Hilton Sandestin Golf Resort & SpaMiramar Beach, Floridawww.ieee-rapid.org

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http://www.ieee-ipc.org

http://www.ieee-islc.org


2020 • 2020IEEE Photonics Society Co-Sponsored Events

2020 Wireless and Optical Communications Conference (WOCC)1-2 May 2020Newark, New Jersey USAwww.wocc.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 International Conference on Optical Network Design and Modeling (ONDM)18-21 May 2020Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spainhttps://ondm2020.cttc.cat• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 International Conference Laser Optics (ICLO)8-12 June 2020Saint Petersburg, Russiawww.laseroptics.ru• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 Italian Conference on Optics and Photonics (ICOP)9-11 June 2020Parma, Italywww.icop2020.unipr.it• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference (OECC)5-9 July 2020Taipei, Taiwanhttp://oecc2020.ntust.edu.tw• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 Photonics North (PN)May 26, 2020 - May 28, 2020Niagara Falls, ON Canadawww.photonicsnorth.com• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE Eighth International Conference on Communications and Electronics (ICCE)15-17 July 2020Phu Quoc Island,Vietnamwww.ieee-icce.org

2020 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Pacific Rim (CLEO-PR)2-5 August 2020Sydney, Australia www.cleopr2020.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 Asian Surface Emitting Laser Day (VCSEL)20-23 August 2020Changchun, Chinawww.vcsel-day.asia• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 IEEE 5th Optoelectronics Global Conference (OGC)7-8 September 2020Shenzhen, Chinahttp://www.ipsogc.org/• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Optoelec-tronic Devices (NUSOD)14-18 September 2020Turin, Italywww.nusod.org/2020• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC)20-24 September 2020Brussels, Belgiumwww.ecoc2020.org• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2020 International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP)Nov 23, 2020 - Nov 26, 2020Matsue, Japanwww.mwp2020.org

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http://www.wocc.org

https://ondm2020.cttc.cat

http://www.laseroptics.ru

http://www.icop2020.unipr.it

http://oecc2020.ntust.edu.tw

http://www.photonicsnorth.com

http://www.ieee-icce.org

http://www.cleopr2020.org

http://www.vcsel-day.asia

http://www.ipsogc.org/

http://www.nusod.org/2020

http://www.ecoc2020.org

http://www.mwp2020.org


Dates: August 25th - 29th 2020This is our eight Biophotonics and Imaging Graduate Summer School. It is an important opportunity for graduate students in 2020 to access the kind of close contact with leading professors that only this kind of environment facilitates.

Tutors for BIGSS 2020 will include:

Martin Booth (Oxford): Advanced MicroscopySteve Jacques (Washington): Tissue OpticsCaroline Boudoux (Montreal): EndoscopyDavid Sampson (Surrey): OCTSarah Bohndiek (Cambridge): PhotoacousticsArjun Yodh (U. Penn): Brain-NeurophotonicsBrian Wilson (Toronto): Photo Medicine, Radiation Medicine

and Nano MedicineWei Chen (Oklahoma): Photoimmunology

http://tomi.nuigalway.ie/; [email protected]

Copyright © BIGSS 2020 Conference Secretariat, All rights reserved.BIGSS 2020

Deadline for abstracts: 16th March 2020Course corresponds to 5 ECTS

http://tomi.nuigalway.ie/



Announcing an Issue of the IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS on

Optical Signal Processing

The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (JSTQE) invites manuscript submissions in Optical Signal Processing. The field of Optical Signal Processing is very broad and multidisciplinary, incorporating areas from materials, device design, and fabrication; system demonstration; and mathematical tools. Linear and nonlinear techniques are used extensively for applications ranging from optical communications, RF communications, quantum communications and processing, to ultrafast science and biophotonics. The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics invites manuscript submissions in the area of Optical Signal Processing. The purpose of this issue of JSTQE is to highlight the recent progress and trends in developing leading-edge optical signal processing technologies and techniques. Areas of interest include (but are not limited to):

Broadband, high-efficiency nonlinear devices Photonic integrated circuits, e.g., with structural nonlinear enhancement or mixed linear and nonlinear elements, for optical signal

processing Semiconductor devices, including semiconductor optical amplifiers and sources Nonlinear material platforms for optical signal processing Highly nonlinear fibers

Systems applications and demonstrations Linear and nonlinear optical signal processing techniques for communications and information processing (optical, RF, and quantum) Optical switching technologies, concepts, and techniques

Mathematical tools Time-frequency techniques Fourier techniques Neruromorphic computing and deep learning applied to optical signal processing

The Primary Guest Editor for this issue is Lawrence Chen, McGill University, Canada. The Guest Editors are: Bill Corcoran, Monash University, Australia; Amy Foster, Johns Hopkins University, USA; Leif Oxenløwe, DTU, Denmark; Chester Shu, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is June 1, 2020. Hardcopy publication of the issue is scheduled for March/April 2021.

Unedited preprints of accepted manuscripts are normally posted online on IEEE Xplore within 1 week of the final files being uploaded by the author(s) on ScholarOne Manuscripts. Posted preprints have digital object identifiers (DOIs) assigned to them and are fully citable. Once available, the preprints are replaced by final copy-edited and XML-tagged versions of manuscripts on IEEE Xplore. This usually occurs well before the hardcopy publication date. These final versions have article numbers assigned to them to accelerate the online publication; the same article numbers are used for the print versions of JSTQE.

For inquiries, please contact: IEEE Photonics Society JSTQE Editorial Office - Chin Tan Lutz (Phone: 732-465-5813, Email: [email protected])

The following documents located at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jstqe-pho are required during the mandatory online submission.

1) PDF or MS Word manuscript (double column format, up to 12 pages for an invited paper, up to 8 pages for a contributed paper). Manuscripts over the standard page limit will have an overlength charge of $220.00 per page imposed. Biographies of all authors are mandatory, photographs are optional. See the Tools for Authors link: www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/index.html.

JSTQE uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts and previously published papers. Authors should ensure that relevant previously published papers are cited and that instances of similarity are justified by clearly stating the distinction between a submitted paper and previous publications.

Submission Deadline: June 1, 2020 Hard Copy Publication: March/April 2021

Call for Papers

Publications


http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jstqe-pho

http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/index.html


Announcing an Issue of the IEEEJOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS on

Advanced Photonic Modulation: Devices, Systems & Techniques

The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (JSTQE) invites manuscript submissions in the area of Advanced Photonic Modulation: Devices, Systems & Techniques. Electro-refraction and electro-absorption light modulation – induced e.g. by carrierdispersion, the Pockels, or Quantum Confined Stark Effect – are at the forefront of modern photonic circuits. Optical modulators are central to most photonic applications including optical telecommunications, Datacom, quantum information processing, deep learning, Lidars, to name just a few. Device specifications required for advanced modulation systems are increasingly difficult to achieve and some strategies such as hybrid integration have been developed to further extend their performance. Alternatively, modulation formats have also been adapted to increase data rates given state-of-the-art component and system characteristics. This special issue focuses on the recent progress of advanced photonic modulation from devices to systems. Topics include

Optical modulation in silicon photonics platforms (plasma dispersion effect, electro-absorption in Ge-based materials) Physical effects for light modulation (Pockels, Kerr, carrier dispersion, Quantum Confined Stark, Franz-Keldysh effects) Ferroelectric materials for optical modulation (BTO, LiNO3….) Doped polymers for ultra-high-speed integrated modulation Hybrid integration for light modulation Strained silicon photonics for Pockels effect. Pure phase integrated modulators Advanced modulator architectures such as resonant or slow wave Advanced technology for electro-optical effects

The scope of the special issue also encompasses system and integration related topics such as Complex modulation formats. Optical transceivers for next generation of high-speed circuits New light modulation paradigms Integration with drive circuitry Multiphysics modeling applied to optical modulation.

The Primary Guest Editor for this issue is Prof. Laurent Vivien, Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N), CNRS, University Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France. The Guest Editors of the issue are: Prof. Jeremy Witzens, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, Dr. David Thomson, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom, Prof. Mitsuru Takenaka,The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, Prof. Hon Ki Tsang, Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China

Unedited preprints of accepted manuscripts are normally posted online on IEEE Xplore within 1 week of the final files being uploaded by the author(s) on ScholarOne Manuscripts. Posted preprints have digital object identifiers (DOIs) assigned to them and are fully citable.Once available, the preprints are replaced by final copy-edited and XML-tagged versions of manuscripts on IEEE Xplore. This usually occurs well before the hardcopy publication date. These final versions have article numbers assigned to them to accelerate the online publication; the same article numbers are used for the print versions of JSTQE.

For inquiries, please contact:IEEE Photonics Society JSTQE Editorial Office - Chin Tan Lutz (Phone: 732-465-5813, Email: [email protected])

The following documents are required during the mandatory online submission at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jstqe-pho.

1) PDF or MS Word manuscript (double column format, up to 12 pages for an invited paper, up to 8 pages for a contributed paper). Manuscripts over the standard page limit will have an overlength charge of $220.00 per page imposed. Biographies of all authors are mandatory during submission, photographs are optional. See the Tools for Authors link:www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/index.html.

2) MS Word document with full contact information for all authors as indicated below:Last name (Family name), First name, Suffix (Dr./Prof./Ms./Mr.), Affiliation, Department, Address, Telephone, Facsimile, Email.


Preliminary Call for Papers

Submission Deadline: August 1, 2020Hard Copy Publication: May/June 2021






Biophotonics

The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (JSTQE) invites manuscript submissions in Biophotonics. The emerging field of Biophotonics has opened up new horizons for extensive transfer of state-of-the-art technologies coming from the areas of quantum electronics, lasers and electro-optics to the life sciences and medicine. Recently developed innovative biophotonics technologies impose significant impact on biomedical research and public health, since they provide advanced minimally invasive, rapid and cost-effective techniques for precise diagnostics, monitoring and treatment of a variety of diseases. The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics invites manuscript submissions in the area of Biophotonics. The purpose of this issue of JSTQE is to highlight the recent progress and trends in developing leading-edge biophotonics technologies. Areas of interest include (but are not limited to):

Advanced biophotonics imaging, sensing and diagnostic methods and systems Emerging biophotonics imaging techniques including cellular/intracellular, molecular, 3D endoscopic, translational clinical, photoacoustic,

photothermal, diffuse, phase-sensitive, OCT, confocal, terahertz, machine learning, microscopic and multi-photon in-vivo bioimaging Spectroscopy-based diagnostics including fluorescence, Raman, elastic scattering, evanescence-wave, near-/mid-IR spectroscopy Novel biophotonics sensing techniques Multi-modal biophotonics diagnostics

Progress in minimally-invasive biophotonics therapeutic techniques Ultrashort pulse laser tissue therapeutics Precise laser tissue manipulation in ophthalmology, dentistry, dermatology, cardiology, neurosurgery, photodynamic cancer therapy Robotic and imaging guided targeted laser surgery Novel photobiomodulation therapeutic techniques and dominant light-tissue-interaction mechanisms at cellular and tissue level Light-assisted nerve and neuron-growth stimulation, cellular/tissue repair, optogenetics, photoimmunotherapy optical and laser radiation safety evaluation and dosimetry

Development of novel laser, fiber-optic and electro-optic biophotonics tools and devices

The Primary Guest Editor for this issue is Ilko Ilev, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA. The Guest Editors are: David Nolte, Purdue University, USA; Qiyin Fang, McMaster University, Canada; Giuliano Scarcelli, University of Maryland, USA; Yuji Matsuura, Tohoku University, Japan; William Calhoun, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA; and Thomas Huser, University of Bielefeld, Germany.

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is October 1, 2020. Hardcopy publication of the issue is scheduled for July/August 2021. Unedited preprints of accepted manuscripts are normally posted online on IEEE Xplore within 1 week of the final files being uploaded by the author(s) on ScholarOne Manuscripts. Posted preprints have digital object identifiers (DOIs) assigned to them and are fully citable. Once available, the preprints are replaced by final copy-edited and XML-tagged versions of manuscripts on IEEE Xplore. This usually occurs well before the hardcopy publication date. These final versions have article numbers assigned to them to accelerate the online publication; the same article numbers are used for the print versions of JSTQE.





Submission Deadline: October 1, 2020 Hard Copy Publication: July/August 2021

Call for Papers






Nanobiophotonics

The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (JSTQE) invites manuscript submissions in Nanobiophotonics. Nanobiophotonics is an advanced field of modern science and biomedical nanotechnology. It has been leading recently to the development of innovative nanotechnologies that provide noninvasive optical imaging, sensing, precise diagnostics and therapeutics at cellular, intracellular and molecular levels with an unprecedented ultrahigh resolution beyond the diffraction barrier in the sub-wavelength nanoscale range (below 100 nm). The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (JSTQE) invites manuscript submissions in the area of Nanobiophotonics. The purpose of this issue of JSTQE is to highlight the recent progress and trends in developing of leading-edge nanobiophotonics technologies. Areas of interest include (but not limited to):

Novel approaches in ultrahigh-resolution nanoimaging and nanoscopy beyond the diffraction limit in the nanoscale range In-vivo cellular/intracellular nanobiophotonics imaging and sensing Single molecule spectroscopy and imaging Plasmonic, quantum-dot, surface-enhanced Raman, and infrared nanoparticle biosensor probes Nanoparticle-enhanced optical diagnostics, therapeutics and theranostics Advanced cancer nanobiophotonics Nonlinear ultrahigh-resolution imaging and diagnostics Optical manipulation of nanoparticles Monitoring biomolecular interactions, structures, and functions on the nanoscale Novel nanobiomaterials engineered for nanobiophotonics applications Noninvasive biophotonics methods for characterizing nanobiomaterials Biocompatibility and phototoxicity of novel nanobiomaterials Emerging nanobiophotonics diagnostic, therapeutic and theranostic devices

The Primary Guest Editor for this issue is Ilko Ilev, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA. The Guest Editors are: Andrea Armani, University of Southern California, USA; James Tunnell, University of Texas at Austin, USA; Beop-Min Kim, Korea University, Korea; Wei-Chuan Shih, University of Houston, USA; Andrew Fales, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA; and Niko Hildebrandt, University of Paris, France.

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is December 1, 2020. Hardcopy issue publication is scheduled for September/October 2021. Unedited preprints of accepted manuscripts are normally posted online on IEEE Xplore within 1 week of the final files being uploaded by the author(s) on ScholarOne Manuscripts. Posted preprints have digital object identifiers (DOIs) assigned to them and are fully citable. Once available, the preprints are replaced by final copy-edited and XML-tagged versions of manuscripts on IEEE Xplore. This usually occurs well before the hardcopy publication date. These final versions have article numbers assigned to them to accelerate the online publication; the same article numbers are used for the print versions of JSTQE.





Submission Deadline: December 1, 2020 Hard Copy Publication: September/October 2021

Call for Papers





Announcing an Issue of the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

Special Issue on

IEEE Photonics Conference 2020 (IPC 2020)

The IEEE Photonics Technology Letters (PTL) will publish a special issue featuring selected papers from the IEEE Photonic Conference 2020 (IPC2020), Vancouver, Canada scheduled for September 27th – October 1st 2020. This special issue offers an opportunity to expand accepted IPC2020 papers into IEEE Photonic Technology Letter papers, providing additional technical results and/or further discussions and insights, expanding beyond the 2-page IPC2020 papers. All invited and contributed papers presented at IPC 2020 conference are invited to submit the extended version (4-page compliant to IEEE PTL format) of their work to this special issue. All manuscripts submitted to this issue will go through the standard review process according to the PTL review guidelines.

Guest Editors: Zetian Mi, University of Michigan, USA Christina Lim, The University of Melbourne, Australia Weidong Zhou, University of Texas at Arlington, USA Dominique Dagenais, National Science Foundation, USA Submissions by website: ScholarOne Manuscripts: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ptl-ieee Manuscript Type: “IPC2020” Submission questions: Sylvia Hinkson, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters ([email protected])

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2021 Hard Copy Publication: May 15, 2021

Call for Papers

https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ptl-ieee



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ADVERTISER’S INDEXThe Advertiser’s Index contained in this issue is compiled as a service to our readers and advertisers. The publisher is not liable for errors or omissions although every effort is made to ensure its accuracy. Be sure to let our advertisers know you found them through the IEEE Photonics Society Newsletter.

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Photonics Society Mission StatementPhotonics Society shall advance the interests of its members and the laser, optoelectronics, and photonics professional community by:• providing opportunities for information exchange, continu-

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Photonics Society Field of InterestThe Society’s Field of Interest is lasers, optical and photonic de-vices, optical fibers, and associated lightwave technology and their systems and applications. The society is concerned with transforming the science of materials, optical phenomena, and quantum electronic devices into the design, development, and manufacture of photonic technologies. The Society promotes and cooperates in the educational and technical activities which contribute to the useful expansion of the field of quantum opto-electronics and applications.

The Society shall aid in promoting close cooperation with other IEEE societies and councils in the form of joint publications, sponsorships of meetings, and other forms of information ex-change. Appropriate cooperative efforts will also be undertaken with non-IEEE societies.

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A New Optical Fiber Testbed for the Photonics Community · 2020. 6. 24. · April 2020 Vol. 34, No. 2 A New Optical Fiber Testbed for the Photonics Community Also Inside: • Photonics

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