Award recognises photonic IC developers: News from Infinera

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Three senior Infinera engineers, Dr Charles Joyner, Dr Radha Nagarajan and Dr Richard Schneider, will be honoured next month with the Aron Kressel LEOS Award for their contribution to the development of the Infinera photonic integrated circuit (PIC). The annual Aron Kressel LEOS Award recognises important contributions to optoelectronic device technology, with an emphasis on 'technology which has found its way into widespread usage', according to LEOS. The award will be presented at the LEOS annual meeting in Montreal, Canada on Monday 30th October 2006.

LEOS, the Laser and Electro-Optical Society, is a division of the IEEE.

'This award is a well-deserved recognition of the hard work, dedication, and pioneering innovation of Chuck, Radha, Rick and indeed the entire PIC engineering team over the past five years', said Jagdeep Singh, Infinera cofounder and CEO.

The Infinera photonic integrated circuit (the I-PIC 100 series) is at the core of Infinera networks that have been deployed for Infinera customers worldwide, including some of the world's largest IP networks.

Infinera PICs, the first large-scale photonic integrated circuits deployed commercially, incorporate more than 50 optical components on a single chip approximately 5mm square, including ten lasers, each transmitting data at a rate of 10Gbit/s.

The integration of many functions onto a single, compact, monolithic chip enables each Infinera DTN line card to send and receive data at a rate of 100Gbit/s, ten times the capacity of the typical line card of conventional optical systems.

The PIC simplifies the process of turning light into digital bits, enabling customers' networks to deliver digital functionality more cost-effectively and at more points in the network than in conventional optical networks.

Infinera customers use the digital functionality and Infinera's GMPLS networking intelligence to offer rapid service provisioning and other advanced features such as bandwidth on demand.

'Not long ago, many industry observers said large-scale photonic integrated circuit technology was decades away from successful commercialisation', commented Dave Welch, Chief Strategy Officer for Infinera.

'The Infinera PIC team made numerous breakthroughs in terms of design, process, specification, system architecture and manufacturability that made the PIC a reality today'.

'Chuck, Radha, and Rick played significant parts in those achievements'.

'We are proud to see them receive this award'.

All three recipients of the award hold PhDs in engineering, and joined Infinera in 2001.

Born in Decatur, Georgia, Dr Joyner came to Infinera after 20 years at Bell Labs, much of that time devoted to research into photonic integration.

Dr Nagarajan grew up in Singapore, has graduate degrees from universities in Japan and the USA, and worked at SDL and JDS Uniphase before joining Infinera.

Originally from Washington state, Dr Schneider has a PhD in materials science from Northwestern University.

Prior to joining Infinera, he worked at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and then at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Labs, focusing on laser materials and epitaxy.

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Award recognises photonic IC developers

Three senior Infinera engineers will be honoured next month with the Aron Kressel LEOS Award for their contribution to the development of the Infinera photonic integrated circuit.