Speaker Biographies (Invited)

Kenichi Iga was born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan in 1940. He received his B.E. in 1963, his M.E. in 1965, and his Dr. Eng. Degree in 1968 from Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 1968 he joined the P&I Lab., Tokyo Institute of Technology, became Associate Professor in 1973, and Professor in 1984. From 1979 to 1980 he stayed at Bell Laboratories as Visiting Technical Staff Member.  He has been awarded Teiichi Yamazaki Chair Professor since 1993. In 2000, Prof. Iga served as Director of Institute Library and Director of P&I Microsystem Research Center. He retired Tokyo Institute of Technology in March 2001 and was awarded by Professor Emeritus. Dr. Iga joined Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) as Executive Director since April 2001. He is also a guest professor of Kogakuin University. Prof. Iga served as the President of Electronics Society of Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan in 1996.

Prof. Iga first proposed (in 1977) and pioneered the research of surface emitting semiconductor lasers. He is an active proponent of microoptics, utilizing gradient-index microlens arrays, and has been working toward the dream of

After retiring from Bell Labs, he served as IEEE Congressional Fellow on the staffs of the House Science Committee 

Herwig Kogelnik was born in Graz, Austria in 1932. He received the Dipl. Ing. and Doctor of Technology Degrees, both from the Technische Hochschule Wien, Vienna, Austria, in 1955 and 1958, respectively, and the Ph.D. Degree from Oxford University, Oxford, England, in 1960.

From 1955 to 1958 he was Assistant Professor at the Institut fur Hochfrequenztechnik, Vienna, engaged in microwave research and teaching. He won a British Council Scholarship to Oxford from 1958 to 1960, where he did research on electromagnetic radiation in magnetoplasmas and anisotropic media. He joined Bell Laboratories (earlier owned by AT&T, currently by Lucent Technologies), Holmdel, New Jersey, in 1961, where he has been concerned with research in optics, electronics and communications, including work on lasers, holography, optical

guided-wave devices, and integrated optics. He was Head of the Coherent Optics Research Department from 1967 to 1976, was Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory from 1976 to 1983, and Director of the Photonics Research Laboratory from 1983 to 1997. He is presently Adjunct Photonics Systems Research Vice President.

Dr. Kogelnik is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and of the Optical Society of America. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 and to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1994. In the spring of 1982 he was a visiting McKay Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the recipient of the 1984 Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America (OSA), the 1989 David Sarnoff Award of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), the 1990 Joseph Johann Ritter von Prechtl Medal from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria and the 1991 Quantum Electronics Award from the IEEE Lasers and Electro Optics Society. He was elected Vice President of the Optical Society of America for 1987 and served as President in 1989. He was elected as Honorary Fellow of St. Peter's College at Oxford University in 1992. He is the recipient of the 2001 IEEE Medal of Honor.

Herwig Kogelnik served as Program Chairman and Chairman of the IEEE/OSA sponsored conferences on Laser Applications and Engineering (CLEA), Integrated Optics, and the International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC). He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart, Germany. He has also served as Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Monmouth Arts Foundation, as Chairman of the Selection Committee for the Marconi International Fellowship Award, as a Trustee of the New York Museum of Holography, and as president of the Seabright Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club. He is currently a member of the International Jury for the Austrian Wittgenstein Prize, chairman of the Engineering Sciences section of the NAS, and a member of the National Research Council (NRC) Board on Assessment of NIST Programs.

Herwig Kogelnik and his wife Christa (nee Müller) live in Rumson, New Jersey. They have three children: Christoph, Florian and Andreas. Their favorite sports are tennis, swimming, paddle tennis and skiing.

Nikolai Ledentsov, a co-founder, graduated from the Electrical Engineering Institute in Leningrad in 1982 and the same year started his work at the Ioffe Institute at the laboratory of Professor Zh.I. Alferov (Nobel Prize in Physics 2000). He became a Principal Scientist at the Ioffe Institute in 1999. He received Degrees of Candidate and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics from the Ioffe institute in 1987 and 1994, respectively. In 1990-1991 with the of Alexander Karpinsky Fellowship he was a guest scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut of Solid State Physics in Stuttgart, Germany, at the department of Prof. K. von Klitzing (Nobel Prize in Physics 1985). In 1992 he became a Professor (Full Professor since 1994) at the Electrical Engineering University of St. Petersburg. Since 1994 he has been involved in close scientific collaboration with the Institut for Solid State Physiks of the Technical University of Berlin. He has authored more than 500 papers, 10 patents, and three monographs.

The main interests of Prof. Ledentsov are concentrated in the fields of physics and technology of epitaxial nanostructures and in development of new types of optoelectronic devices. In 1996 N.N. Ledentsov received a Young Scientist Award from the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors for "pioneering and outstanding contributions to the development of physics and MBE growth of InGaAs-GaAs quantum dot

Dr. Robert F. Leheny was appointed Deputy Director of DARPA effective June 2, 2003. Prior to that he was Director of the Microsystems Technology Office. He joined DARPA in October 1993 as a Program Manager in the area of optoelectronics. Since joining DARPA, his program interests have focused primarily on the application of photonics, microelectronics and MEMS technologies to communication and RF systems and related materials and device technologies for information processing systems applications.

Prior to joining DARPA, from 1987 to 1993 Dr. Leheny was an Executive Director for Network Technology Research in the Applied Research Laboratory of Bell Communications Research, Inc. (Bellcore, now known as Telcordia Technologies, Inc), Red Bank, NJ. In this position he was responsible for managing an organization researching materials and device designs for communication systems. From 1984 to 1987, he was Director of the Electronic Device Research Group in the same Laboratory at Bellcore. From 1967 to 1983 he was a member of

Dr. Leheny received his BS from the University of Connecticut in 1960 and a Doctor of Engineering Science Degree from Columbia University in 1966. In 1983, he was named a Bell Labs Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and in 1992 he was named a Distinguished Graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Engineering. He has published over 70 papers, co-edited a book and authored four book chapters. He is a Fellow  of  the  IEEE  and  a  member  of  the  American  Physical  Society,  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  and  the New York Academy of Sciences.

Welch earned his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Delaware in 1981 and his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 1985. In January of 1985, he became a research scientist for SDL, Inc., where he was promoted to Vice President of R&D in 1990. In 1996, he was named Vice President of SDL's Systems Business Group and, in 1998, as Chief Technical Officer and Vice President of Corporate Development, he assumed responsibilities that included overall technology direction and merger/acquisitions. After the merger of SDL and JDSU, Dr. Welch became Senior Vice President for JDSU responsible for technology direction, integration, and business development activities for the amplification and transmission portions of the business. Then, in early 2001, he co-founded Infinera, Inc.

Welch has published over 250 articles and is an author of over 80 patents. His research in the areas of semiconductor lasers, non-linear optics, diode pumped solid state lasers, fiber amplifiers, fiber lasers, and silica waveguide devices earned him the 1992 Adolph Lomb Award from the Optical Society of America, the 1998 Engineering Achievement Award from the Laser and Electro-Optics Society, and the 1999 Fraunhofer Award, and his contributions have been acknowledged in over 17 product-of-the-year awards. Welch is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and a senior member of the IEEE.

Yan Sun (S'90-M'95-SM'97) received a B.S. in physics from Shandong Normal University (Jinan, China) in 1984, an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Univeristy of Electronic Science and Technology of China, (Chengdu, China) in 1987, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, (Stanford, California) in 1995.

Dr. Yan Sun is the vice president of engineering and chief technical officer at Onetta, Inc., which develops and manufactures intelligent optical modules for next-generation optical networks. As one of the company's co-founders, Sun leads a team that focuses on the R&D of intelligent optical engines. Prior to Onetta, he worked from 1995 to 2000 on optical amplifiers and WDM optical communication systems at Bell Laboratories and optical networking group, Lucent Technologies, as a member of technical staff and

then a senior manager. During this period, he and his colleagues discovered, modeled and studied the control schemes of fast power transients in optically amplified networks, and demonstrated ultra wide band optical amplifiers and DWDM optical communication systems at terabit level. Between 1985 and 1995, he made numerous contributions in several areas in the fields of microwave electronics, lasers and optics. Sun also worked at University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China between 1987 and 1989.

Dr. Yan is the author and co-author of more than 100 publications and presentations and a co-inventor of 20 patents. He has served on the committees of several international conferences and the editorial board of several technical journals. He was the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Bell Labs President's Gold Award from Lucent Technologies and the Innovator of the Year Trophy in Paris, France. A senior member of IEEE and a member of OSA, Sun has served as a Guest Professor of Tsinghua University and Southwest Jiaotong University in China.

Dr. Mario Paniccia is currently the Director of Photonic’s Technology Lab at Intel Corporation.  Mario currently directs a research group with activities in the area of Silicon Photonics. The team  is  focused on developing silicon-based photonic building blocks using standard CMOS  processing for future use in enterprise and data center communications.   Mario has worked in many areas of optical technologies during  his career at Intel including optical testing for leading edge microprocessors, optical communications and optical interconnects.  Mario has lead developments  of significant breakthrough technologies while at Intel  including the Laser Voltage Probe, a commercial technology  used for optically probing transistors and testing leading edge microprocessors. His teams pioneering activities in silicon photonics have led to   first   silicon modulator with bandwidth >1GHz  (2004)   and the   first continuous wave Silicon laser breakthrough (2005). Mario has won numerous Intel awards including: winner of Innovators Day award in 1997, two Intel Achievement Awards (Intel’s highest technical award) in 1998 and just recently again in 2005. In November 2004 Mario  was awarded by  Scientific American to be one of the top 50 researchers  for his work in the area of silicon photonics. He has published numerous papers, including 3 Nature papers, 2 book chapters, and has over 61 patents issued or pending

Mario earned  a B.S. degree in Physics in 1988 from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a  Ph.D. degree in Solid State Physics from Purdue University in 1994.