Michael Lebby, Chair in Optoelectronics at Glyndŵr University, CEO at Lightwave Logic Inc

Presently, Michael is driving new frontiers in the integrated photonics field as: CEO and Board Director, Lightwave Logic Inc. Michael is also part-time full Professor and Chair of optoelectronics at Glyndwr University in Wales, UK where he contributes to the European Commission’s programs and pilot lines in integrated photonics. Michael has been involved in photonics for his whole career which began with research for the UK Government R&D labs in 1977, and continued at AT&T Bell Labs in 1984. At that time, Michael’s activities included researching novel optoelectronic devices in III-V compound semiconductors. Michael then went to Motorola’s Corporate R&D labs in 1989 and drove the VCSEL based technology platform to product and high volume manufacturing. He continued his fiber optics roles at AMP/TE Connectivity, and then helped initiate Intel’s silicon photonics work in 1999. In 2001, he founded his own company Ignis Optics to develop OC-48/192 transceivers and subsequently sold the company to Bookham (now Oclaro). Michael then led OIDA (Optoelectronics Industry Development Association) in Washington DC to campaign on behalf of the photonics industry. At OIDA Michael coined the term ‘green photonics’ and established this as discipline in the industry. Michael also spoke on Capitol Hill representing the optoelectronics industry. Since 2010, Michael has been focusing on bringing PIC (Photonic Integrated Circuit) based technologies to market in various roles that include Solar, LED lighting, and Integrated Photonics for fiber communications. Michael is pursuing high speed polymer based integrated photonics as part of a polymer PIC platform at Lightwave Logic Inc.

Noori Nourshargh, , N2Scientific

Noori graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1976 from Imperial College London followed by a PhD in fibre optics from the same university.

He worked for GEC-Marconi for 20 years as a research scientist focussing on photonic devices, optical fibres, thin films, sensors, multi-chip modules and interconnects. He then became Director of Engineering at Optical Micro Devices responsible for 8" silicon wafer processing of integrated optical devices. He now runs his own technical consultancy and undertakes some part time teaching on nano-technology and microfabrication.

Bert Jan Offrein - IBM

Bert Offrein received his Ph.D. degree in nonlinear integrated optics from the University of Twente. At IBM Research he contributed to establishing and commercializing adaptive integrated optical technology for DWDM networks. From 2004 to 2016, Bert Offrein was managing the photonics group, addressing optical interconnects for computing systems. Since 2016, he is leading the neuromorphic devices and systems group, addressing cognitive hardware for accelerating neural network learning. Bert Offrein is a principal research staff member at IBM Research and the co-author of over 150 publications and the co-inventor of more than 35 patents.

Robert Blum - Intel

Robert Blum is Director of Strategic Marketing and Business Development for Intel's Silicon Photonics Product Division. Prior to joining Intel, Robert was Director of Strategic Marketing at Oclaro Inc., and held various Director level roles for Oclaro's DWDM and consumer laser portfolio. Before joining Oclaro, Robert was Product Line Manager for optical transmission components at JDS Uniphase Corporation and held various engineering and marketing management roles at Gemfire Corporation, all in California. Robert worked at Deutsche Telekom's research labs in Germany as part of his master's thesis at TU Darmstadt and holds a doctorate degree in Physics from TUHH in Hamburg. He has also studied and done research at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and at Stanford University, California.

Sean Anderson - MACOM

Dr. Anderson is a Principal Optical Engineer with MACOM Technology Solutions, where his focus is silicon photonics. He was previously with Cisco Systems, where he worked on Cisco’s optical PDK, and developed silicon photonic transmitters both for coherent and data center applications. Prior to Cisco he was with Lightwire, which was acquired by Cisco in 2012, where he contributed to the development of the CPAK 100G transceiver module. He has seven patents, and he holds a Ph.D. in Optics from the University of Rochester, where his research was on chip-scale photonics.

Di Liang - Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Di Liang is currently a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard. His research interests include III-V and silicon photonics, hybrid integration, and nanofabrication technology. He has authored and coauthored over 130 journal and conference papers, three book chapters, and was granted by three US/international patents with another 35 pending.

William Ring - POET Technologies

Bill Ring is currently a Senior VP at Poet Technologies where his work encompasses both III-V devices and dielectric technology. The major focus of the Dielectric waveguide development is currently on the introduction of Poet’s Optical Interposer Platform utilizing a low loss dielectric waveguide that is deposited and compatible with current CMOS processes. Previously, Bill was CEO of BB Photonics Inc., a start up developing uncooled 100GbE receivers using InP PICs with embedded dielectric waveguides. This was sold to Poet Technologies in June 2016. From 2010 to 2014, Bill was involved in the due diligence and purchase of Solar Systems Pty Ltd, an Australia concentrated photovoltaic company, where he subsequently held the roles of GM and then Chief Technology Officer for the company. Prior to this, he had started a consulting company in 2005 that worked with several fortune 500 companies and many start-up companies in the areas of defense, optoelectronic components and datacenter optical devices. During this period he also managed workshops for the USA based Optoelectronic Industry Development Association (OIDA) from 2005 to 2009. Before 2005 Bill held positions at Tyco Electronics, as Director of Operations and Director of development for devices and transceivers. Before joining Tyco, he was a Principle Engineer at Hewlett Packard (HP) and responsible for the design and development of 1310nm FP, 1480nm pump and DFB lasers for HP’s fiber optics group. In 1995 he introduced the first strained MQW laser into production at HP's UK facility that was later deployed in HP’s 1300nm SFF/SFP transceivers. Bill Holds a PhD from Surrey University in III-V light emitting devices, which showed that Intervalence Band Absorption (IVBA) was not the dominant loss mechanism in long wavelength lasers.

Peter Winzer - Nokia Bell Labs

Peter J. Winzer heads the Optical Transmission Research at Bell Labs in NJ, where he has worked on multiple aspects of fiber-optic communication systems, advanced modulation, multiplexing schemes, receiver concepts, and digital signal processing. He contributed to high-speed records from 10 Gb/s to 1 Tb/s, and has been promoting spatial multiplexing to scale optical transport systems. Currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology, he was Program Chair of ECOC 2009 and Program/General Chair of OFC 2015/ 2017. Dr. Winzer is a Bell Labs Fellow, a Fellow of IEEE and OSA, and a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Andreas Umbach - Finisar

Andreas Umbach is the General Manager of Finisar Germany in Berlin, where he leads a team of about 150 people working on integrated high-speed components for optical fiber communications at 100Gb/s and above. He studied physics at Technische Hochschule Darmstadt and at Technische Universität Berlin, where he received his Dipl. Phys. degree. His diploma thesis on applied solid state physics was carried out at the Fraunhofer Institut für Mikrostruktur-Technologie. In 1989 he joined the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut in Berlin (HHI). His work in the department of microfabrication technology concentrated on design and technology of HEMTs and high-speed integrated photodetectors based on Indium Phosphide.

Drew Nelson - IQE

Dr Drew Nelson has over 30 years experience in the semiconductor industry in a variety of research and managerial positions. Following a PhD in Semiconductor Physics, he joined BT Research Laboratories in 1981, leading the group responsible for the development of advanced optoelectronic devices for optical fibre communications. He subsequently managed the technology transfer from BT to Agilent for mass production. He co-founded EPI in 1988 (which became IQE in 1999) and was appointed Chief Executive Officer of IQE Plc in April 1999. Dr Nelson has held several Non-Executive Directorship appointments, and served on several Government and Industry bodies. He received an OBE in 2001 for services to the Electronics Industry. He is currently a member of the High Level Group appointed by the EC to oversee the implementation of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) throughout Europe.

Robert Blum - Intel

Robert Blum is Director of Strategic Marketing and Business Development for Intel's Silicon Photonics Product Division. Prior to joining Intel, Robert was Director of Strategic Marketing at Oclaro Inc., and held various Director level roles for Oclaro's DWDM and consumer laser portfolio. Before joining Oclaro, Robert was Product Line Manager for optical transmission components at JDS Uniphase Corporation and held various engineering and marketing management roles at Gemfire Corporation, all in California. Robert worked at Deutsche Telekom's research labs in Germany as part of his master's thesis at TU Darmstadt and holds a doctorate degree in Physics from TUHH in Hamburg. He has also studied and done research at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and at Stanford University, California.

Yuichi Nakamura - NEC

Yuichi Nakamura received his B.E. degree in information engineering and M.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He received his PhD. from the Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems, Waseda University, in 2007. He joined NEC Corp. in 1988 and he is currently a general manager at System Platform Research Labs., NEC Corp. He is also a guest professor of National Institute of Informatics and chair of IEEE CAS Japan Chapter. He has more than 25 years of professional experience in electronic design automation, signal processing, network on chip, signal processing, and embedded software development. 

Presentation
Big data analysis - a golden opportunity for silicon photonics

Today, information and communication technology (ICT) systems make a valuable contribution to solving social problems, with techniques such as big data analysis able to enrich our daily life in many ways. Evolution in processing architecture puts faster performance in reach, but only if innovation in interface architecture among servers can be achieved to avoid the bottleneck of data communication. One solution is optical communication among the servers, and to share our thoughts on the topic we will examine the latest trends in silicon photonics as a way forwards, as well as looking ahead at the advantages of optical connection further into the future. 

Radha Nagarajan - Inphi

Radha Nagarajan has served as Inphi’s Chief Technology Officer, Optical Interconnect, since June 2013. He brings more than 20 years of experience in the area of high-speed optical interconnects. Prior to joining Inphi, he was with Infinera, as a Fellow, working on the design, development and commercialization of large-scale photonic integrated circuits. From 1995 until 2001, he was with SDL/JDS Uniphase.

Dr. Nagarajan is a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA and IET. He has authored four book chapters, and more than 180 technical papers in the areas of high-speed optical components and photonic integration. He has been awarded 114 US patents. In 2006, he shared the IEEE/LEOS Aron Kressel Award for his work on commercializing large-scale photonic integrated circuits. He received his B.Eng. from the National University of Singapore, M.Eng. from the University of Tokyo, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Presentation
Silicon Photonics for Distributed data centre interconnects

Modern day data centre interconnects are not limited by distances. Although the data centres themselves are physical locations, limited in land area, the optical interconnects between them could span anywhere from 10’s km of terrestrial distances to 1000’s of km subsea routes. In this talk, we will focus on the application of Silicon photonics to regional, latency limited data centre interconnects. The discussion will be on low power, high speed, switch pluggable modules that allow for the physical disaggregation of the data centre locations, thus enabling highly redundant and distributed data centre architectures.

Eric Mounier - Yole Développement

With almost 20 years of experience in MEMS, Sensors and Photonics applications, markets, and technology analyses, Dr. Eric Mounier provides deep industry insight into current and future trends. As a Senior Technology & Market Analyst, he is a daily contributor to the development of MEMS and Photonics activities at Yole Développement (Yole), with a large collection of market and technology reports as well as multiple custom consulting projects: business strategy, identification of investments or acquisition targets, due diligences (buy/sell side), market and technology analysis, cost modelling, technology scouting, etc.  Previously, Dr. Mounier held R&D and Marketing positions at CEA Leti (France).  He has spoken in numerous international conferences and has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers. Eric has a Semiconductor Engineering Degree and a Ph.-D in Optoelectronics from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (France). 

Presentation
Silicon Photonics, current status and future perspectives

With Big Data getting bigger by the second, transporting this level of data with existing technologies will soon reach its limit in terms of power consumption, density, and weight. It is now sure that photons will continue replacing electrons throughout networks, including in the Data Centre, the rack, and very soon on the board. The question is: how to achieve this at low cost? The answer is quite simple: market volume in million units will allow scale factor that will drive the cost down. This is the quite simple equation that Silicon Photonics, fundamentally a semiconductor-based process, must solve. Si photonics has been under development for years, but there are still only a few products on the market. However, now that this technology is being pushed hard by large webcom companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft, we believe we have reached the tipping point that precedes massive growth. In my talk, I will present market forecast for Si Photonics for Data Centres applications and will review the industrial landscape and technical challenges.

Vincent Zeng - Facebook

Vincent Zeng is a Manufacturing Quality Engineer responsible for optics at Facebook, where he focuses on the management of optical products from qualification to deployments in Facebook’s Data Centers. Prior to Facebook, Vincent Zeng was the Sr Quality Customer Manager at Brocade for optics and network equipment. He started his optical carrier at JDSU where he produced the first Telcordia Qualified AWG product. Additional to that, he also spent a couple of years at Semiconductor inspection equipment company-KLA Tencor. Vincent holds a doctoral degree in optical physics from Nankai University and Post-doctoral from Max-Planck Institute. 

Presentation
PIC opportunities for datacentres

The growth in network bandwidth at Mega Data-Centers is putting pressure on the photonic technologies to rapidly deliver high-bandwidth interconnects at high volume. In this talk, we will describe Facebook’s scale and some of the trends that are fueling this bandwidth growth. This bandwidth growth will fuel innovation not only in technology, but also in manufacturing processes as traditional technologies struggle to meet the volume challenge. This will change the optics development and commercialization process and open the door for Photonic Integrated Circuits as yield management drives improvements in the wafer-level and advanced photonics packaging with scaled manufacturability and automation.

Martin Schell - Fraunhofer HHI

Martin Schell is chair for Optic and Optoelectronic Integration at the Technical University of Berlin, and Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He also is a board member of the European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), of OptecBB (Competence Network for Optical Technologies in Berlin/Brandenburg, Germany), and member of the Photonics21 Board of Stakeholders. Prior to Fraunhofer, he worked for Infineon Fiber optics as head of production and product line manager FTTH, and at The Boston Consulting Group. 

Presentation
The Zettabyte is not enough: Volume handling for InP, silicon photonics, and hybrid photonic integration

Cisco with its Visual Networking Index has announced the Zettabyte era, as in 2016 the annual run rate for global IP traffic was 1.2 ZB per year. On the other hand, a single InP 3” wafer with lasers or detectors supports some 30,000 devices @ 50Gbit/sec each, equating to roughly 5 ZB per year, when operated continuously. Hence, the success of a particular integration platform relies on its capability of either being able to deal with rather low wafer numbers, or adding (senseful) functionality to increase the per-device-area, or to radically increase the market by going outside telecom/datacom. The presentation will compare InP monolithic, Silicon Photonics, and polymer based hybrid photonic integration with respect to this regard.

Weiming Yao - PITC, TU/e

Weiming Yao received his B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering with honours from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, and two M.Sc. degrees in photonic networks engineering, with honours, from Aston University, Birmingham, UK, and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, in 2010 and 2012 respectively. Since then, he is with the Photonic Integration Group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) where his work focused on the design and characterization of high bandwidth integrated multichannel transmitter PICs. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2017, he is with the newly established Photonic Integration Technology Centre (PITC), where he leads activities on photonic building block and component development.

Presentation
III-V photonic integrated circuits for telecoms and beyond

The generic foundry approach to photonic integrated circuits (PIC) has enabled easy access to PIC technology by lowering its entry and prototyping costs, leading to the wider adoption of optical chips across many application areas. We focus here on the recent progress and the challenges of high-capacity WDM transmitters on III-V material for data and telecom that have been fabricated in such generic integration platforms. Furthermore, we outline the platform architecture of the next generation PICs that support extended scaling in device footprint and performance and at the same time assure a more intimate integration with electronics.

Peter Winzer - Nokia Bell Labs

Peter J. Winzer heads the Optical Transmission Research at Bell Labs in NJ, where he has worked on multiple aspects of fiber-optic communication systems, advanced modulation, multiplexing schemes, receiver concepts, and digital signal processing. He contributed to high-speed records from 10 Gb/s to 1 Tb/s, and has been promoting spatial multiplexing to scale optical transport systems. Currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology, he was Program Chair of ECOC 2009 and Program/General Chair of OFC 2015/ 2017. Dr. Winzer is a Bell Labs Fellow, a Fellow of IEEE and OSA, and a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Presentation
Massive array integration and the need for a holistic digital/analog optics/electronics co-design

The need for 10-Tb/s interfaces operating in 1-Pb/s systems and networks asks for massive array integration across both wavelength and spatial domains. While being accompanied by a series of new device and packaging challenges, the close integration of massive opto-electronic arrays also bears a wealth of opportunities arising from a holistic view of a fully integrated digital-electronics/analog-optics communications engine. Options include the mitigation of integration-induced array impairments using powerful digital signal processing, and the ample use of comb sources as external optical power supplies. This talk will discuss challenges and solution paths towards a 10-Tb/s optics-in/optics-out digital communications engines.

Ruth Houbertz - Multiphoton Optics

Cofounder of Multiphoton Optics GmbH, founded in September 2013. Current function as CEO from August 2014. From 2013 to July 2014, she was CTO of MPO. From 2000 to 2012, she held different technical and management positions at Fraunhofer ISC, where she focussed on materials, processes, and technology/equipment development for photonic and biomedical applications. From 1999 to 2000, she worked at Sandia Nat.’l Labs, Livermore, CA (USA). She invented more than 90 patents and has received many awards and nominations, amongst which are the Finalist in the Prism Award 2017 and 2015, the Cowin Award for Entrepreneurship 2014, the Green Photonics Award 2013, the Joseph von Fraunhofer Award 2007.

Presentation
Quo Vadis – Industrial High Precision 3D Printing

Driven by IoT, Industry 4.0, and social media - the amount of data to be transferred is increasing tremendously, pushing the need for energy-efficient device concepts for a vast variety of products. Low energy data transfer can be achieved by optical interconnects, or by introducing optical elements such as specially designed microlenses into semiconductor laser packaging using High Precision 3D Printing. This allows device makers to significantly reduce process steps independently of the packaging task. Scalability and high throughput with fabrication times from seconds (for optical waveguides and single microlenses) to only a few minutes (for more complex lens systems) are explored as part of the presentation.

Eli Arad - ColorChip

Eli Arad joined the founding team of ColorChip and leads the R&D activity of the company. Mr. Arad has gained over 15 years of industrial experience in developing PLC (Planar Lightwave Circuit) devices and optoelectronic systems.  He is an expert in fabrication and processing of active and passive optical waveguided devices using technologies based on Lithium Niobate and ion exchange in glass. Eli holds a MSc in physical electronics from Tel Aviv University. 

Presentation
Emerging Integrated Optics: an Approach to High Volume Manufacturing

The presentation will discuss ColorChip’s unique, multi- benefit approach to Photonic Integration, through a cross-generation, hybrid multilane platform that has been supporting the pressing demand for bandwidth by mega-datacentres, from 40 through 100G to 400G and beyond. ColorChip has perfected its patented, simplified design and integration technology and transformed it into an automated mass production process that provides high yields and a clear cost advantage.  

Michael Lebby - Lightwave Logic

Presently, Michael is driving new frontiers in the integrated photonics field as: CEO and Board Director, Lightwave Logic Inc. Michael is also part-time full Professor and Chair of optoelectronics at Glyndwr University in Wales, UK where he contributes to the European Commission’s programs and pilot lines in integrated photonics. Michael has been involved in photonics for his whole career which began with research for the UK Government R&D labs in 1977, and continued at AT&T Bell Labs in 1984. At that time, Michael’s activities included researching novel optoelectronic devices in III-V compound semiconductors. Michael then went to Motorola’s Corporate R&D labs in 1989 and drove the VCSEL based technology platform to product and high volume manufacturing. He continued his fiber optics roles at AMP/TE Connectivity, and then helped initiate Intel’s silicon photonics work in 1999. In 2001, he founded his own company Ignis Optics to develop OC-48/192 transceivers and subsequently sold the company to Bookham (now Oclaro). Michael then led OIDA (Optoelectronics Industry Development Association) in Washington DC to campaign on behalf of the photonics industry. At OIDA Michael coined the term ‘green photonics’ and established this as discipline in the industry. Michael also spoke on Capitol Hill representing the optoelectronics industry. Since 2010, Michael has been focusing on bringing PIC (Photonic Integrated Circuit) based technologies to market in various roles that include Solar, LED lighting, and Integrated Photonics for fiber communications. Michael is pursuing high speed polymer based integrated photonics as part of a polymer PIC platform at Lightwave Logic Inc.

Presentation
Scalable PIC platforms: The impact of using polymer PICs for 100 and 400Gbps datacom applications

The explosive growth of integrated photonics both in datacenters, telecom as well as non-communications applications, especially from a market standpoint are opening new doors for scalable PIC platforms. Polymer based PICs offer scalability with increased data-rates as well as lower cost structures and provide an excellent vehicle to address the 'purple brick walls’ (cost/performance) that have appeared in photonics roadmaps. 

Wim Bogaerts - Ghent University/imec

Wim Bogaerts is professor in Silicon Photonics at Ghent University and IMEC. Since his PhD research, he has been one of the pioneers in this field, being the first to manufacture silicon photonic circuits in a CMOS pilot line. In 2014, Wim co-founded Luceda Photonics to bring the design tools he developed to the market. Today, his research focuses on the challenges for large-scale photonic integration, and the potential of programmable photonic ICs. He holds an ERC consolidator grant. 

Presentation
Programmable photonic ICs: making optical devices more versatile

Most of today’s photonic ICs are designed for a specific purpose and targeted at a specific application, in that they resemble an electronic application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). But with PIC technologies and design processes now starting to support larger-scale integration, this opens the door to more generic photonics ICs that can be reconfigured or programmed for diverse applications, resembling electronic FPGAs. Such circuits can implement programmable wavelength filters for WDM or microwave photonics, tunable delay lines, multi-format transceivers or optical information processors. In our talk, we will discuss the current state of this new field in PICs, and the future challenges and applications.

Mark Wade - Ayar Labs

Mark is the President, Chief Scientist, and Co-Founder of Ayar Labs. Prior to founding Ayar Labs, he led the group that designed the optics in the world’s first processor to communicate using light. He holds a PhD from University of Colorado.

Presentation
Design Flows for Monolithically Integrated Electronic-Photonic Systems-on-Chip

As electrical I/O is approaching fundamental bandwidth scaling limits, it is necessary to integrate optical devices and systems more deeply with electronics. Once optical devices are monolithically integrated on the same die as CMOS transistors, the optical devices must follow the same design methodology as high-volume microelectronics. This talk will present a design flow that was used to demonstrate monolithic SoC’s such as a dual-core CPU with photonic I/O, a low-latency network protocol, and a 400G transmitter with >1Tbps/mm2 bandwidth density and 0.83 pJ/bit energy efficiency. 

Sasan Fathpour - CREOL, The College of Optics & Photonics

Professor Sasan Fathpour joined the College of Optics and Photonics faculty in 2008. His current research interests include heterogeneous integrated photonics, nonlinear integrated optics, silicon photonics, and nonconventional optical waveguide platforms for mid-wave infrared and other applications. He has received several research and teaching incentive awards at UCF. He is also recipient of UCF Reach for the Stars Award (2015), the ONR Young Investigator Award (2013), the NSF CAREER Award (2012) and UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research (2007). He is a Fellow of OSA, the Optical Society, and a Senior Member of SPIE and IEEE. He is the co-editor of a book entitled "Silicon Photonics for Telecommunications and Biomedicine" published by CRC Press in 2012, and a coauthor of about 150 journal and conference papers, book chapters and patents.

Professor Fathpour received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2005. He then joined the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA as a postdoctoral fellow and was promoted to a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2007. Prior to joining CREOL, he was a Senior Researcher at Ostendo Technologies.

Presentation
Novel Heterogeneous Integrated Photonic Platforms on Silicon

Silicon photonics owes its success to the versatile and high-quality silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers. However, the SOI technology has several limitations for some important applications such as integrated nonlinear optics and mid-infrared photonics. We have been developing several novel heterogeneous integrated photonic platforms and have demonstrated various high-performance devices and circuits on them. Example heterogeneous platforms developed for the first time by our team at CREOL are lithium niobate on silicon, silicon on lithium niobate, silicon on nitride, and all-silicon membranes. These novel approaches and associated fabrication methods will be presented together with a discussion on the performance of fabricated devices and circuits. 

Yvain Thonnart - CEA-Leti

Yvain Thonnart graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, France, in 2003, and received the Engineering Diploma from Telecom ParisTech, France, in 2005, specializing in electrical engineering. Since 2005, he has been a researcher with CEA-LETI, Grenoble, France, where he has been appointed expert on communications and synchronization in Systems on Chip. His research interests include asynchronous logic, network-on-chip architectures, physical implementation of energy-efficient SoCs. He is currently leading a project on silicon photonics interposers for optical communications in massively parallel Systems on Chip.

Presentation
Integrating photonic building blocks towards complete electro-optical computing

Efficient data transfer between IOs, memories and cores is a key element of high-performance computing. The trend for massively parallel architectures increases the communication needs, at the cost of increasing latency and power consumption. To overcome this, we are investigating the potential of optical communication on large silicon interposers, to stack and connect computing and memory chiplets together. In this talk, we present recent developments at CEA-Leti considering the architectural, design and fabrication aspects of optical interposers, from digital and high-speed analog elements, to the optical devices, in view of the power and thermal constraints. In addition, we share our insight on the integration of these building blocks in a complete electro-optical computing module.

Shinji Matsuo - NTT

Shinji Matsuo received Ph.D. degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. He has been researching high-speed directly modulated lasers, tunable lasers and photonic functional devices. He is currently Senior Distinguished Researcher in NTT Device Technology Laboratories. He received the Opto-Electronic Integration Technology Award (Izuo Hayashi Award) in 2013.

Presentation
III-V membrane lasers on silicon for datacom and computercom applications

Lasers on silicon substrate are expected to fabricate large-scale PICs with low cost because they can be heterogeneously integrated with low-cost Si photonics devices. In addition to the cost issue, reducing the power consumption of laser is quite important because it limits the integration density of PIC. For this purpose, we have developed membrane lasers on SiO₂/Si substrate, in which large optical confinement factor enables us to enhance the modulation efficiency of directly modulated laser. We employ epitaxial regrowth to fabricate buried heterostructure on directly bonded III-V layers on SiO₂/Si substrate, which allows us to employ large-scale Si substrate for fabricating lasers. 

Arne Leinse - LioniX

Arne Leinse Ph.D (Chief Commercial Officer) is active in integrated optics for more than 15 years. He received a PhD degree from the University of Twente in the integrated Optical Microsystems group in 2005. Hereafter he joined LioniX BV where he was involved in the invention and development of the TriPleX™ platform from the beginning. He has been involved from the original concept until the exploitation and (co)authored over 100 articles in the last years. He has been active as Vice-President of LioniX BV in the last years and since the establishment of LioniX-international in 2016 active in the role of Chief Commercial Officer.

Presentation
Silicon nitride based TriPleX PIC modules in a broad range of applications

The silicon nitride based waveguide technology (TriPleX™) of LioniX International enables new applications due to its unique properties. The ultra-low loss over a broad wavelength range (from 405-2350 nm), the ability to create spot size converters, the integration of low power phase shifters and the hybrid integration with other platforms. Supplying PIC based modules instead of PICs only moved the mature PIC platform from technology push to market pull. Fully assembled plug and play modules lower the access barrier for the development of new applications and the hybrid combination with for instance InP enables unique functionalities. In this presentation application examples of PIC based modules will be described in more detail and an outlook will be given to future technology developments. 

Henk Bulthuis - Kaiam Corporation

Henk Bulthuis is Team leader of the optics design group of Kaiam Europe, formerly Gemfire Europe, Avanex, Alcatel Optronics and Kymata.

He co-founded BBV software BV and BBV design BV which were acquired by Kymata in 2000. Close to 800 mask reticles and 2000 of his PLC/PIC designs were simulated, layed out fabricated and tested. Most of the designs were made in glass or silicon technologies.  

Presentation
Vertical integration: bringing key elements together to match PICs to the market

At PIC International 2018, we'll be discussing planar lightwave circuits and free space coupling techniques, highlighting functions for various commercial transceiver configurations targeting data centre and telecoms applications.

Jessie Rosenberg - IBM

Dr. Jessie Rosenberg is a Research Staff Member at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, where she focuses on developing photonics technology integrated with CMOS electronics for optical communication applications. She received an A.B. degree in Physics from Bryn Mawr College in 2004, a Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2010, and has been at IBM since 2010.

She was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of innovators in science in 2011, served as a Program Chair for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in 2016, and is currently an Associate Editor for the journal Optics Express.

Presentation
Inline wafer-scale photonic testing to boost PIC manufacturing efficiency

One of the cornerstones of high throughput CMOS processing is inline monitoring and waferscale test functionality. In addition to validating device performance and generating statistical data, testing at early stages in fabrication provides a critical feedback signal for the health of the manufacturing line and enables problems to be diagnosed well before the expensive back-end-of-line and packaging processes have been completed. Combined electrical and optical inline and waferscale testing can provide yield metrics, lookup tables, and built-in self-test in an automated fashion, reducing cost by ensuring that further fabrication and packaging only proceeds on known-good-devices.

Scott Jordan - Physik Instrumente

Scott Jordan is Head of Photonics for PI. Scott is a manager and physicist by training, with an MBA in Finance and New Venture Management. He has driven multiple business development and turnaround endeavors. Scott’s patents for fast interfacing and DAC resolution enhancement helped advance nanopositioning performance more than a hundredfold, enabling capabilities for applications as diverse as nanopatterning, atomic force microscopy, MEMS, microlithography, x-ray interferometry and photonics. He developed the first digital gradient search, fundamental to photonics test and packaging, and established a successful business upon it. He has repeatedly driven the field forward as device designs have advanced. His most recent work enables one-step, global alignment optimization across multiple inputs, outputs and degrees of freedom of today’s Silicon Photonics devices. A confirmed technology evangelist, Scott publishes and presents frequently. He was named a PI Fellow in 2016.

Presentation
99% Alignment Cost Reduction through Novel Parallel Technology— An Enabler for SiP Production Economics

We are confronted with many challenges for economical, repetitive manufacturing of Silicon Photonics devices. One universal challenge that has only recently been addressed is for fast, nanoscale alignment of optical fibers, micro-optical elements and active and passive photonic devices in multi-channel, arrayed formats. Since these needs begin with probing at the wafer level and recur through final packaging, the benefits of higher-throughput alignment are profound for cost and yield. Legacy alignment technologies are problematic for the multiple, interacting inputs and outputs commonly encountered in today’s SiP devices. With these older technologies, time-consuming, costly, repetitive alignment loops were required to achieve global alignment, leading to unacceptable production economics as quantities scale. These challenges have led to the broad adoption of a novel, parallel alignment technology with native multi-channel and multi-element simultaneous-optimization capabilities which we discuss in depth. It can perform global optimization across the inputs and outputs of complex photonic and optoelectronic devices, in multiple degrees of freedom, in one rapid step. Its high throughput addresses multiple emerging process pain-points from wafer test to packaging and chip test. This new alignment technology has by now been integrated into wafer probers and volume packaging and chip-test systems. It is facilitating testing and packaging operations with high throughput and yield. Throughput improvements have exceeded two orders of magnitude versus traditional approaches. 

Michael Geiselmann - LIGENTEC

Michael Geiselmann studied physics and engineering at University Stuttgart and Ecole Centrale Paris. After his PhD at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona in 2014 he joined the laboratory of Prof. Kippenberg at EPFL, where he advanced frequency comb generation on integrated silicon nitride chips towards applications and was involved in several international research projects. In 2016, he co-founded LIGENTEC. At LIGENTEC he is advancing the technology development of silicon nitride based integrated circuits and is looking for new business opportunities. He is responsible for technical sales and brought LIGENTEC to the ESA Business Incubator Switzerland program and several other European and transatlantic projects.

Presentation
Silicon nitride for new PIC applications

Low loss waveguide technology based on stoichiometric silicon nitride together with low bending losses enabled through thick film nitride is opening the door to a variety of PIC applications. Such a platform can support the fabrication of complex designs at the smallest footprint, and is ideal for application areas from the visible to the mid-infrared, including high optical power scenarios. Markets include telecoms, quantum optics, bio-sensing and phase-array opportunities. Topics covered in the talk include examples of silicon nitride core technology, ranging from nonlinear integrated optics to linear low loss PIC operations. 

Graham Reed - CORNERSTONE

Graham Reed is Professor of Silicon Photonics at the University of Southampton, UK. In 2012, he and his group joined Southampton from the University of Surrey, where he was Head of Electronic Engineering from 2006 to 2012.  Reed is a pioneer of Silicon Photonics. He established the Silicon Photonics Research Group in 1989, which has provided a series of world leading results since its inception, and is particularly well known silicon optical modulator work. Reed has served on and chaired numerous international conference committees, and is currently a member of 6. He has published over 350 papers on Silicon Photonics, and in 2013 was the recipient of the IET Crompton Medal for Achievement in Energy, and in 2014 he was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.  

Presentation
CORNERSTONE: Silicon photonics fabrication capability based on DUV lithography

With the demand for silicon photonics on the rise, there is a clear need for flexible and affordable fabrication capabilities, suitable for device prototyping, using processing techniques that are compatible with the major industrial foundries. CORNERSTONE, headed up by Professor Graham Reed at the University of Southampton, offers such a capability via a multi-project-wafer (MPW) service, with up to 6 passive calls and 2 active calls per year on various silicon photonics platforms. In this talk, we outline our fabrication capabilities including our recently installed deep-UV Scanner, present our early data, and discuss upcoming MPW calls.

Florent Gardillou - Teem Photonics

Florent Gardillou studied Physics and Engineering at the University of Toulouse and Grenoble Institute of Technology (FR) where he received a PhD degree in 2005 in Photonics and Integrated Optics. He joined the Applied Physics Laboratory of prof. Salathé at EPFL (CH) in 2005 to develop waveguide lasers based on high-efficiency KYW thin-film materials. SInce 2006, he is with Teem Photonics. He was first involved in the R&D group to advance the ioNext platform development. He was also a project leader for many national and european projects. He is now the Sales Manager for the Integrated Optics activity of Teem Photonics and works for New Business Development.

Presentation
Photonics on Glass : The ioNext PIC Platform

Teem Photonics ion-exchange technology (ioNext) on glass brings unique features for innovative photonic integrated circuits. ioNext enables flexible 2.5D waveguide engineering (mode conversion, waveguide depth transition) while keeping a robust and collective photomasking-based approach.  ioNext cicuits benefit from the intrinsic glass transparency to provide ultra low propagation loss from 400 to 2000 nm. Teem Photonics platform offers solutions from design to packaging, from prototyping to larger series manufacturing with a short turnaround time. This presentation will provide an overview of the technology and its applications, from silicon chip-to-fibre interfacing to innovative sensors. 

Ignazio Piacentini - ficonTEC

Ignazio Piacentini has recently taken up the position of Director of Business Development at ficonTEC GmbH in Achim, Germany, after heading the Photonics Devices Assembly Business Unit at PI miCos GmbH (PI Group).

Previous to that, he directed ImagingLab Srl, in Lodi (Italy) an engineering / consulting company specialized in machine vision and advanced robotics. He held the position of Business Development Manager Europe for imaging and motion of National Instruments (Austin, TX) from 1999 to 2003.
He has a B.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering (Milan, Italy, 1975) and a M.Sc. degree in Digital Systems and Instrumentation (Polytechnic of Central London, UK, 1987).

Before joining the machine vision industry in the early nineties, he has spent many years working for the European Commission (Euratom) designing control and data acquisition systems for the thermonuclear fusion research community, with a long spell at the JET project (Culham Labs, UK). In more recent years he was selected as an 'external expert' consultant for ITER (a large scale thermonuclear experimental project) working on Remote Handling Control System issues, Viewing equipment, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and 3D Vision and Metrology.

He has served two consecutive mandates as a member of the Board of Directors of EMVA (European Machine Vision Association).

Presentation
Better and faster assembly and testing: recent advances and innovations in automated manufacturing equipment

At previous PIC Int’l events I have presented an overview of automated photonics assembly and test equipment and the need to prepare for volume manufacturing. 2017 has been a year of rapid growth: ficonTEC had to concentrate on fulfilling existing customers requests, while also engaging in a number of R&D activities that will help in developing the next generation of manufacturing machines. A ‘carousel’ of different topics will cover advances in testing, some innovative micro-optics assembly techniques, the ‘recycling’ of well-proven industrial robotics for photonics assembly tasks, and the automation of optical wire bonding techniques. Harmonizing and integrating all of these developments with existing solutions will be made possible by our software platform. 

Luc Augustin - SMART Photonics

Luc Augustin received his MSc. and PhD. Degrees in electrical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He was Process Engineer at Cedova, which later became Photonics Lab as part of Philips Research. After this he switched to Photovoltaics and was Senior R&D Engineer at Solland Solar. In 2012 he became Project Manager at Eindhoven University and in that same year he joined SMART Photonics B.V.. Since 2014, he is CTO at SMART Photonics. His expertise is in simulation and design of InP based photonic integrated circuits, fabrication of III-V photonics components and integrated circuits and characterisation of semiconductor based photonic components

Presentation
Paving the way to high performance low cost photonics

Photonic Integration is key to deal with the challenges in optical solutions for data- and telecom, in terms of cost, performance and scalability.  InP has proven itself as the material of choice for lasers and we show that Photonic Integration on InP is a solution to tackle all these. The benefits for InP are clear: full monolithic integration of lasers, amplifiers as well as modulators and passives enables a versatile, flexible and reliable platform to build PICs for the current needs. The improved manufacturing capabilities a.o. using high resolution ArF lithography clearly indicate the path to high volume manufacturing at low cost with improved performance. 

Christopher Cone - Mentor Graphics

Chris has over 20 years in the IC design industry. For the past 5 years he has been collaborating with several members in the photonics community to develop Photonic IC Design methodologies. Chris’s is currently the Technical Product Manager in charge of photonic IC design solutions at Mentor Siemens and holds an MSEE in electrical engineering from the University of New Mexico

Presentation
From schematic to layout – overcoming today’s PIC design challenges

For several years, Mentor has been driving photonic design and has set the precedent for partnering with leading photonic venders to provide production level solutions. This presentation will cover a Mentor’s Open Access native Tanner tools along with its standard interface to Calibre for physical verification and lithography simulation. Additionally it will highlight Mentor’s existing photonic design solutions through key partnerships including Luceda Photonics, Lumerical and VPIphotonics. Finally, the audience will see new capabilities enabling photonic IC designers to scale their innovations from the research stage and into production.

André Richter - VPIphotonics

Dr. André Richter is an expert in the field of optical communications and related modeling and design aspects. He holds a M.Sc. degree from Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. from TU Berlin. Being member of the VPIphotonics team since 1997, André contributed numerous fundamental modeling advances in various fields. For many years he led product management, technical services and R&D activities. André serves as General Manager of VPIphotonics since 2013.

Presentation
Scalable design of integrated photonic and optoelectronic circuits

Efficient and convenient solutions for electronic photonic design automation (EPDA) present fundamental prerequisites for the fast and innovative development of next generation integrated photonic and optoelectronic circuits. To highlight progress in this area, we will demonstrate how a layout-aware schematic-driven methodology enables the rapid prototyping of new design concepts, including parameter optimization of photonic and electronic parts, analysis of manufacturing tolerances, and comparison of technology and integration alternatives.

Twan Korthorst - PhoeniX Software

Twan Korthorst has been active for over 20 years in the field of chip design and fabrication for non-traditional semiconductor micro and nano technologies. During the final stage of his studies in Electrical Engineering at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, he co-founded the Microflown Team, developing the world's first particle velocity microphone. In 1996 he started as a Product Engineer at Twente Microproducts (TMP). After the acquisition of TMP by Kymata, a Scottish-based communications solutions provider using integrated photonics in 2000, he occupied the post of Director of Operations at Kymata Netherlands (later Alcatel Optronics Netherlands). Having been a Manager of Operations at DEMCON Advanced Mechatronics, Twan joined PhoeniX Software in August 2007. As CEO of the leading supplier of Photonic IC design solutions, he is instrumental in advocating photonic integration technologies and bringing parties together to accelerate the development of design flows and manufacturing supply chains.

Presentation
Driving the PIC Revolution

In this talk Twan Korthorst will address Synopsys' commitment to provide the best in class design solution for manufacturing solution for Photonic Integrated Circuit design. Combining more than 30 years of Synopsys' electronic design automation (EDA) experience with over 25 years of photonic device and circuit simulation, layout and verification of the RSoft and PhoeniX Software teams, enables PIC design teams to have access to widely used, high-quality IC and photonic design solutions from a single provider with a single support channel. Synopsys goals is to help designers to meet their evolving photonic integrated circuit design requirements and support foundries to develop better yielding processes and devices. Driving the PIC Revolution!

Peter O'Brien - Tyndall

Dr. Peter O’Brien obtained his PhD in Physics from University College Cork in 1999. He has a Masters in Electronic Engineering and Degree in Physics from Trinity College Dublin. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology and research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (Micro Devices Laboratory) where he worked on the development of millimetre wave devices for remote sensing applications. Dr O’Brien co-founded one (Biosensia) and founded a second company (Epi-Light). His second company, Epi-Light limited, developed speciality photonic systems for medical device and pharmaceutical applications. He successfully sold the company in 2009 and returned to the Tyndall National Institute to establish a research activity in advanced photonic packaging. Dr O’Brien is now head of the Photonics Packaging Group and is involved in a wide range of both academic and industry research projects, across the telecoms and medical device sectors. Dr. O’Brien is also deputy director of the Science Foundation Ireland, Irish Photonic Integration Centre

Presentation
PIXAPP – Open Access Opportunities for Advanced PIC Packaging’

Robert Scarmozzino - Synopsys

Dr. Robert Scarmozzino is currently a Synopsys Scientist, and directs the RSoft line of Photonics Design Automation (PDA) tools within Synopsys, Inc. Rob earned his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Columbia University in the mid-1980’s. He has authored or co-authored over 150 journal and conference papers. He co-founded RSoft Design Group, which was the leading manufacturer worldwide of PDA software prior to its acquisition by Synopsys.

Presentation
PIC Design: From Concept to Manufacture

The emerging photonic foundry industry needs flexible design tools in order to expand support for commercial applications. Designers need tools that work both out of and outside the box to creatively and inexpensively explore new applications before committing to costly prototyping. The Synopsys design flow meets this need through tightly integrated concept development at both the circuit and component levels. Design starts at the schematic level using foundry-specific or custom PDK components to create PICs, proceeds to system-level simulation, and ultimately concludes with automated layout for manufacture. Custom PDK components are automatically generated using the industry’s widest range of available simulation methods for passive and active photonic devices.

Pieter Dumon - Luceda Photonics

Pieter Dumon is co-founder and CTO of Luceda Photonics. In 2007 Pieter obtained his PhD in electronics engineering from Ghent University, on silicon photonics wavelength filter devices. Subsequently, Pieter coordinated ePIXfab, the European silicon photonics platform, which he grew to a partnership offering MPW, packaging, training and design services. While working on the imec silicon photonics platform, he implemented many PIC designs and co-developed IPKISS. In 2014, he co-founded Luceda to support the growing user base of IPKISS on a commercial basis.

Presentation
Moving the edges in PIC process design kits

While PIC technology is gradually maturing, designers need process design kits as the foundation of a tightly integrated yet flexible design flow. By matching standard PDK formats with a flexible Python based design flow, we can simultaneously deliver the required maturity and flexibility. Circuit level design and simulation, layout and device CAD are enabled from one PDK. We will demonstrate this using Luceda’s reference design flow, in both silicon and indium phosphide technologies.

Milan Mashanovitch - Freedom Photonics

Presentation
Cutting-edge PICs for sensing applications

Over the past decade, photonic integrated circuits have found a variety of new application areas, including many different types of sensing systems. Photonic integration has enabled new functionality, as well as reduction in size, weight and power (and eventually cost) of these new systems.  In this talk, we will provide an overview of a variety of cutting edge PICs for sensing applications, with the focus on some of the recent technology that we have developed in this arena. 

Sascha Geidel - Fraunhofer ENAS

Sascha Geidel joined the Fraunhofer ENAS in 2011. Since this time he is working within the group “Fluidic Integration and System Technologies” on the integration of additional functionality into microfluidic systems, which leads to smart, autonomous devices with reduced fluidic interfaces and less complex control and readout instrumentation. In the last years, the topic of DNA analysis for species detection and antibiotic resistance detection got more and more in the focus of his applied research within European and national projects.

Presentation
Adding the ‘tech’ to biotech - opportunities for photonic integrated circuits

Biochemical analytics and diagnostics are pushing forward into areas outside the laboratory and towards mobile and stand-alone field applications. Efficient diagnostic devices are easy to use, lightweight and provide reliable results. The focus of applied research is to validate the efficient selection of technologies and enable their smooth integration into small packages.  Photonic integrated circuits have a key role to play in driving performance and contributing to a compact final device, and -- to highlight these elements -- this talk presents the transformation of a PIC into a biosensor. To allow automated biochemical process execution, the PIC is combined with a fluidic circuit. The system application targets explanatory exploration missions in terms of a wet chemical payload - for example, on board a Mars-rover. Nevertheless, the development procedure can also be transferred to other decentralized diagnostic applications on earth. 

Andrew Sparks - Analog Devices

Andrew Sparks is the Technology Development Manager for Lidar at Analog Devices, Wilmington MA, USA. He oversees the maturation of advanced photonic technologies from R&D to high-volume products, which serve markets including automotive, industrial, and drones.

Andrew received the S.B. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT. His career has focused on developing high-volume transducer technologies, including MEMS sensors at Analog Devices and light valves for transmissive displays at Qualcomm. Andrew and colleagues started the company’s lidar program in 2016 to respond to emerging customer demand for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle technology.

Presentation
Lidar for Autonomous Driving: Key Technological Opportunities

Autonomous driving will be enabled by three types of sensors: radar, vision, and lidar (light detection and ranging). Lidar employs lasers, beam steering elements, and photodetectors, along with substantial electronic functions, to create 3D maps with angular resolution superior to radar and range resolution superior to cameras. Some analysts project lidar to grow to a US$80B market in 2035.

Forward-looking lidar systems are expected to see 200 m and operate under challenging shock, vibration, and temperature conditions. In this talk, potential enabling technologies will be discussed, including Analog Devices’ liquid crystal electro-optic beam steering technology.