Advisory board
Jens Buus – Chairman
Dr. Jens Buus was born in Denmark in 1952. He is a co-founder of Syntune, inventor of the modulated grating Y-branch (MG–Y) laser structure, and is heading the Advisory Board. Jens gained a master degree (electrical engineering / electro-physics) at the Technical University of Denmark in 1979, and also holds Ph.D. and Dr.Techn. degrees from this university. He was with Plessey Research Caswell (later GEC Marconi Materials Technology, now part of Bookham) from 1983 to 1992. Since 1993 he has run his own consulting company, Gayton Photonics. In the period from 1989 to 2004 Jens has been project manager / technical administrator of 6 EU-funded research projects. His publication list includes about 60 journal papers and over 70 conference contributions, about 20 of these have been invited papers or tutorials at major conferences. In addition he is co-author of the book "Tunable laser diodes and related optical sources," and he has given short courses and invited papers on tunable lasers at numerous major conferences, including ECOC and OFC.
Ian Bennion
Dr. Ian Bennion is Professor of Photonics and Head of Electronic Engineering at Aston University, where he leads the Photonics Research Group which he co-founded in 1991. Before joining Aston, he spent 16 years in industrial research and development with Plessey Research Caswell. His experience and expertise resides in optical / photonic component and systems technologies for telecommunications, sensors, signal processing and instrumentation. At the present time, his activities are being pursued, collaboratively, within the aerospace, civil works, defence, energy, marine, medical, structural, and transportation sectors of industry, in addition to telecommunications. Ian was Research Director of Indigo Photonics Ltd, a company founded in May 2001, with financial backing from 3i plc, to exploit advanced photonic component technology established within his Aston Group. After Indigo Photonics was acquired by Insensys Ltd in 2003 he has maintained a consultative collaboration.
Magnus Breidne
Dr. Magnus Breidne has since January 2004 been the Science Counsellor at the Swedish Embassy in Beijing. Before that he was Vice President and Director of R&D at Acreo AB, Sweden's foremost research institute in micro-electronics and optics. During 1995-1999 he was Managing Director at the Institute of Optical Research in Sweden — where he initiated and managed a number of research initiatives for Swedish industry within fiber optics, optical information processing and imaging. Magnus has been on the board of several Swedish start-up companies and is presently on the board of the Norwegian company WiCom ASA, listed on the Norwegian stock market, as well as being a member of the executive committee of the European Optical Society. He is a Fellow of SPIE.
Jacek Chrostowski
Dr. Jacek Chrostowski has over 30 years of experience in all aspects of optoelectronics and optical networks. He was VP, technology strategy at EMCORE Corp. From 1998 to 2003 he worked at Cisco Systems in a number of roles, including Technology Deputy, Optics in the Office of CTO, and member of the University Research Board. Previous to that he had a distinguished carrier at the National Research Council of Canada. He co-authored over 100 scientific papers, a large number of conference presentations, 6 US patents in opto-electronics, and co-edited 3 books. He has served on many program committees of international conferences in fiber optic networks. He currently serves on a number of industrial advisory boards, including EXFO EO Inc, Xignal Technology AG, iN3Parters Inc and Syntune AB. He has been a reviewer / auditor in many Government research programs, including the US NSF, the European Commission and the Canadian NSERC. In 2002 he served on the 10-year technology roadmap committee in optical networking for the US Congress. He is currently technical editor of IEEE ComSoc Magazine and has been a co-editor of the special September 2003 ComSoc Magazine issue "After the optical bubble - the reality check".
Tom Koch
Dr. Tom Koch is a joint Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics departments at Lehigh University, and holds the Daniel E. '39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair of Director, Center for Optical Technologies. Prior to this Tom held Vice President positions at SDL, Lucent, an most recently at Agere Systems where he led the Technology Platforms organization with responsibility for research and development of the underlying materials and device technologies supporting Agere's optoelectronic and IC product families. Tom received his A.B. in Physics from Princeton and his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech in 1982. Joining Bell Labs Research in that year, his contributions in optoelectronic technologies enabled key advances in high-capacity optical fiber communications. Tom has chaired numerous major international conferences, authored more than 275 conference and journal publications, book chapters, and books. He has received the Distinguished Lecturer Award and the William Streifer Award for Scientific Achievement from the IEEE LEOS, is a Fellow of Bell Labs, the OSA, and the IEEE.
Torsten Wipiejewski
Dr. Torsten Wipiejewski has been Vice President of Photonics at ASTRI in Hong Kong since February 2003. Prior to joining ASTRI he was Director of Advanced Technology and Program Manager at Agility Communications in Santa Barbara, CA and General Manager of the Optoelectronic Components Group of Infineon Fiber Optics in Munich, Germany. Torsten received a "summa cum laude" Ph.D. degree from the University of Ulm, Germany in 1994 and a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany in 1990. Torsten is Executive Committee member of ECTC and serves as Level-Leader for the US National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) Roadmap. He is a member of IEEE LEOS and CPMT and has authored or co-authored more than 120 publications and over 20 patents. He was awarded Agility's "Patent Award" in 2001 and 2002, the Infineon's "Inventor of the Year Award" in 1999, the "Project Innovations Award" of the Siemens Semiconductor Group (now Infineon) in 1999, and the "Best Ph.D.-Thesis Award" in 1994.