22 - 26 September 2013
ICC London ExCeL, UK

Plenary speakers

 

Watch the live webcast of the plenary speakers presentations.

 

09:30 - Welcome

Professor Sir David Payne, University of Southampton, UK

Professor Will Stewart, University of Southampton, UK.

 

09:45 - Fibre Broadband: beginning or end of the journey?
Dr Tim Whitley, Managing Director, Research and Innovation, BT, UK

As MD for Research & Innovation, Tim is accountable for BT’s Global research activities

 

Tim is also MD for Adastral Park, BT’s Global Engineering HQ.

 

Prior to his current role Tim was BT’s Group Strategy Director, accountable for guiding BT’s major strategic and investment choices.  He has been at the heart of BT’s exciting Next Generation Access plans which will see the next generation of broadband – Fibre Broadband – deployed across the UK since their inception in 2008.

 

Tim joined BT in 1981 as an apprentice engineer and during his 32 year career has held many positions ranging from advanced optical-fibre device and network research, technology consultancy and architecture to Director of techno-economics analysis and Group technology Officer.  He has published over 50 papers in the field of optical communications, holds a BSc in Physics and a PhD in Electronic Systems Engineering.  Tim is based at BT’s Global Engineering and Research HQ, Adastral Park, Ipswich, Suffolk.

 

Tim lives in Felixstowe, England with his wife Teresa and four daughters.

 

Overview:

Demand for bandwidth rises inexorably, fuelled by over 30 years of innovation and development in communications.

 

This presentation will reprise BT’s latest fibre deployment plans and will describe how optical technology, applied to both core and more recently access networks, has played a huge role in delivering a society that enjoys widely available broadband communications and the host of communications, entertainment and transactional services we increasingly rely on for our daily lives.

 

Looking a little further forward as technologists, we can see how exciting concepts such as flexgrid, virtualisation, SDN, and WDM PON will enable the next wave of applications. And as future customers or policy makers, we can envision how fibre communications powered concepts such as eHealth, BigData and Machine to Machine will further revolutionise the very society in which we live.

 

This presentation will describe how we got to this point and provide a few pointers as to where next.


10:05 - The Controversial Challenges for Today’s Research Towards next Generation Optical Networks
Dr Peter Stassar, Technical Director Optical Research, Huawei Technologies, The Netherlands

MSEE Eindhoven University of Technology (1980)

 

Since 2011 Technical Director Optical Research at Huawei Technologies. Previously: Senior Optical Product Manager on FTTH CPEs at Genexis in the Netherlands (2004 – 2011) and consulting with Finisar Co. for ITU-T representation (2004 – 2011). Senior Application and System Engineer for optical interface specifications and applications for PDH, SDH, OTN, DWDM, PON equipment, working at Lucent Technologies, AT&T and Philips Telecom (1980 – 2003).

 

Since 2006 Rapporteur of Q.6 in ITU-T SG15, "Characteristics of optical systems for terrestrial transport networks”. Since 1989 participating in Q.6. Editor of Recommendations G.664 (optical safety), G.693 (very short distances optical interface specifications), G.695 (CWDM optical interface specifications).

 

Since 2011 participating in IEEE 802.3: 100G and 400G client side optical interface specifications


10:25 - Intelligence Everywhere

Warren East, Former Chief Executive Officer, ARM, UK

Warren East was Chief Executive Officer for ARM Holdings plc from October 2001 to July 2013.

 

Warren joined ARM in 1994 to set up the ARM consulting business. He later held the position of vice president of business operations and was appointed to the board as chief operating officer in October 2000.

 

ARM is a constituent of the FTSE 100. Under Warren’s leadership, ARM matured into the world’s leading Semiconductor IP licensing company with nearly 1000 Microprocessor licenses sold to over 360 semiconductor companies worldwide, collectively shipping approximately 10 billion ARM chips per year.

 

Warren is a chartered engineer, a companion of the Chartered Management Institute and a Fellow of both the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Warren holds a master’s degree in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford and has an honorary doctorate from Cranfield University.

 

In 2007 Warren was named Business Leader of the year at the National Business Awards, and was named in the Barron's list of the world's best 30 CEOs in 2011 and 2013. He is senior non-executive director and chairman of the audit committee of De La Rue plc, and a non executive director of Micron inc, Dyson limited, and the Connected Digital Economy Catapult.

 

He chairs the ESCO leadership forum and is a member of several advisory boards for venture capital firms and their investee business, and for both Oxford University and Cranfield University.


10:45 - Coffee break


11:15 - A New Broadcasting System; How media will change in a highly connected world

Stephen Baily, General Manager, Research and Development, BBC

Stephen Baily was appointed General Manager of BBC Research & Development in March 2011. Stephen is responsible for the overall management of the BBC’s research and development department located at sites in London and Manchester, with activities across the media value chain, and its engagement with wider industry and academia.

 

In recent years, Stephen has worked in a variety of roles in the BBC’s Future Media & Technology and Operations divisions, including a period as Head of Distribution Technology, during which he represented the BBC’s interests in spectrum planning and Digital Switchover.

 

Previously, Stephen had worked for Research and Development for a number of years, initially in radio frequency design and latterly broadcast system architecture. During his career, Stephen has played a leading role in system standardisation and launch of a number of key services, including Freeview, Freesat and the BBC’s HD television services.


12:05 - The Energy Efficient Internet; Searching for the Milli-Volt Switch

Professor Eli Yablonovitch, Director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science, Berkley, USA

Eli Yablonovitch is the Director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S), a multi-University Center based at Berkeley. He received his Ph.d. degree in Applied Physics from Harvard University in 1972. He worked for two years at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and then became a professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. In 1979 he joined Exxon to do research on photovoltaic solar energy. Then in 1984, he joined Bell Communications Research, where he was a Distinguished Member of Staff, and also Director of Solid-State Physics Research. In 1992 he joined the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was the Northrop-Grumman Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering. Then in 2007 he became Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he holds the James & Katherine Lau Chair in Engineering.

Prof. Yablonovitch is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Optical Society of America and the American Physical Society. He is a Life Member of Eta Kappa Nu, and is elected as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has been awarded the Harvey Prize (Israel), the IEEE Photonics Award, the IET Mountbatten Medal (UK), the Julius Springer Prize, the R.W. Wood Prize, the W. Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, and the Adolf Lomb Medal. He also has an honorary Ph.d. from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and from the Hong Kong Univ. of Science & Technology.

In his photovoltaic research, Yablonovitch introduced the 4n2 light-trapping factor that is in worldwide use for almost all commercial solar panels. This factor increased the theoretical limits and practical efficiency of solar cells. 4n2 is based on statistical mechanics, and is sometimes called the “Yablonovitch Limit”.

Yablonovitch introduced the idea that strained semiconductor lasers could have superior performance due to reduced valence band (hole) effective mass. Today, almost all semiconductor lasers use this concept, including telecommunications lasers, DVD players, and red laser pointers.

Yablonovitch is regarded as a Father of the Photonic BandGap concept, and he coined the term "Photonic Crystal". The geometrical structure of the first experimentally realized Photonic bandgap, is sometimes called “Yablonovite”.


12:25 - European research in Network Technologies: Horizon 2020 perspective

Dr Bernard Barani, Deputy Head of Unit European Commission, DG, Connect, Belgium 

Bernard Barani graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne in 1982. He then served as communications engineer in industry on military infrared systems and then with the European Space Agency on advanced satcom programmes.

 

In 1994, he joined the European Commission Directorate General "Information Society", and was responsible for implementation of research and policy issues of wireless communication, Internet, audio visual systems, Software and Services.

 

He has been Deputy head of the unit dealing with research and policy in the field of RFID, Internet of Things and networked enterprise systems and is currently Deputy head of the unit in charge of research and innovation on Network Technologies in the CONNECT Directorate General of the European Commission.

 

Overview:

Research in network technologies has received significant support under the currently running ICT programme of the 7th Framework Programme of research sponsored by the European Union. About 600 M€ have been invested in these technologies, a significant part having been invested to support optical technologies and all optical networks.

 

With the upcoming Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme covering the 2014-2020 financial period, new approaches and topics are being contemplated to support the European network industry. The talk will hence focus on how it is envisaged to cover the sector at large under Horizon 2020, including the optical network technologies, and the retained priority themes for the first work programme.


12:40 - Closing remarks

 

 

 




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