MATTHEW PEACH ECOC 2018
ECOC 2018 Let’s get technical The 44th edition of the European Conference on Optical Communication –ECOC 2018 – takes place in Rome. Besides the once again sold-out exhibition, the conference highlights the latest developments in optical communication technologies. Matthew Peach reports.
F ollowing the usual National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications), a consortium of 37 Italian universities specialising in telecommunication. Scientific patronage is provided by the Institute of Communication Information & Perception Technologies (TeCIP) of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Endorsement has also been granted by the IEEE Photonics Society and OSA, the Optical Society. Antonella Bogoni , chair of the Technical Programme told Optical Connections about her objectives this year and gave some insight about the range of talks and speakers we can expect. Bogoni, who is head of research area of CNIT, is one of the pioneers of the Integrated Research Centre for Photonic Networks and Technologies created in Pisa in 2001. It is based on an agreement between four partners, CNIT, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Ericsson, and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). She is also leader of CNIT’s digital & microwave photonics R&D activities. She explained, “It’s traditional that the technical programme chairs are from conference practice of being organised by senior industry figures and academics from the host country, ECOC 2018 is organised by CNIT (the
the country in which ECOC takes place. I have personally been attending ECOC since 1999 and I am very enthusiastic about this exhibition and conference because it teaches us so much about new developments in optical communications and actually the whole state of the industry. This year with the Technical Conference Programme we are trying to highlight the industry themes that are most relevant for tackling the current challenges and opportunities facing the industry. These include applications of graphene to photonics, microwave systems, quantum information and photonics in space, which is a rapidly- growing area, especially following the development of microsatellites.” “These are actually the themes of our plenary talks, which comprise four authoritative presentations linked by a single idea: emerging technologies that are now opening up for photonics future scenarios of extreme interest.” THE 2018 PLENARIES l Graphene Andrea C. Ferrari, director, Cambridge Graphene Centre, University of Cambridge, UK. His talk is entitled: “Graphene and related materials for photonics and optoelectronics”. Ferrari is Professor of Nanotechnology at the
University of Cambridge. He is also the founding director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Graphene Technology. He is also the chair of the Management Panel and the Science and technology officer of the €1 billion EU Graphene flagship (http:// grapheneflagship.eu). In his most important works on graphene and related materials, Ferrari has pioneered bulk production, mass scale identification by optical and spectroscopic means, its implementation in composites, printed and flexible electronics, lasers, photo-detectors, microcavities and plasmonic enhanced structures. l Microwave Photonics Vincent Urick programmanager, Strategic Technology Office (DARPA), USA. His keynote speech is entitled ‘Photonics for microwave systems: present capabilities and future opportunities’. Dr. Urick joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in May 2016 as a program manager in the Strategic Technology Office. His research interests include photonics, electronic warfare, and sensing in urban environments. His position prior to DARPA was head of the Applied Radio Frequency Photonics Section at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).
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| ISSUE 14 | Q3 2018
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