Roland Ryf

Nokia Bell Labs, United States

Biography:

Roland Ryf received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Interstate University of Applied Sciences of Technology, Buchs, Switzerland, in 1990 and the M.S. degree in physics and the Ph.D. degree in physics, working on photorefractive self-focusing and spatial solitons, parallel optical processing based on holographic storage, and fast optical correlation, in 1995 and 2000, respectively.,Since May 2000, he has been working in the Photonic Subsystem Department at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, NJ, where he is focusing on the optical design and prototyping of optical microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based switches, spectral filters, and dispersion compensators, and the demonstration of their applications in optical networks.

Lars Thylén

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Biography:

Lars Thylén received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in applied physics (optics), both from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972 and 1982, respectively. From 1973 to 1982, he was with SRA Communications, working in the areas of digital electronics, digital image processing, diffraction optics, and optical signal processing. From 1976 to 1982, he was with the Institute of Optical Research, Stockholm, involved in research in integrated photonics. In 1982, he joined Ericsson, heading a group doing research in the area of integrated photonics. In 1992, he was appointed as a Professor of photonics and microwave engineering with KTH and was heading the Laboratory of Photonics and Microwave Engineering until retirement 2014. From 2003 to 2007, he was the Director of the Strategic Research Center in Photonics, KTH, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. Since 2014, he has been a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Theoretical Chemistry and Biology, KTH. Since 2008, in addition to his position at KTH, he has been with Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA, USA. His current research interests include nanophotonics, integrated photonics for interconnects, devices for photonic switching, and high-speed modulation, notably in data center environments. He has authored or coauthored more than 200 journal papers and conference contributions, and several book chapters as well as coauthored one book. He was the General Cochair and the Technical Program Committee Chair of the ECOC 2004, Stockholm, and the General Chair for the 2008 Asia Pacific Optical Communications Conference in China. He is a Member of the Optical Society of America and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Masatoshi Suzuki  

Chitose Institute of Scicence and Technology, Japan

Biography:

Professor Masatoshi Suzuki received B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1979, 1981 and 1984, respectively. He was the R&D Fellow of KDDI Corp, the Executive Vice President of KDDI R&D Laboratories, President of KDDI foundation and visiting Professor of Waseda University. Currently, he is a Vice President and Professor of Chitose Institute of Science and Technology, Hokkaido, Japan. 

Since joining KDD (currently KDDI), Tokyo, Japan in 1984, he has been engaged in research on large-capacity long-haul optical communication systems, including the pioneering research on the world-first EA modulator integrated DFB lasers (EMLs) in 1987, the invention of dispersion managed soliton in 1995, 1Tbit/s transoceanic transmission in 1999, and 10Pbit/s SDM transmission in 2017, which is equivalent of capacity increase of seven order of magnitudes within 30 years.  With the technology, he and international teams demonstrated the first 10Gbit/s WDM transmission over 10,000km in 1998, which were applied to most of the trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic and East-Asian optical submarine cable systems, such as Japan-US, TAT-14, EAC and C2C cables.  His current research interests are ultra-large capacity optical communication systems based on space division multiplexing, free-space optical communications for non-terrestrial applications and Silicon Photonics for optical computing.

He is a life Fellow of IEEE, a fellow Emeritus of Optica, and a Fellow and Honorary member of IEICE.  He served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Lightwave Technologies, an elected member of Bord of Governors of IEEE Photonics Society and Auditor of IECIE.  He is currently a chairman of Photonic Internet Forum.

Through these works, he has co-authored 5 books and more than 420 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and produced 120 registered International Patents. He has received various awards for his research over the years, including the Best Paper Awards from OEC 1988, IEICE 1996 and OECC 2000, Achievement Award, Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award and three IEICE Milestone Awards from IEICE. Minister Awards from MEXT and METI in Japan, Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial Prize, Hisoka Maejima Award, Medal with purple ribbon from Emperor in Japan in 2017, Ichimura Prize in industry in 2018, Telecom System Technical Award in 2021, and C&C Prize in 2024.  He is the IEEE/Optica 2025 John Tyndall Award recipient, for pioneering and seminal contributions to large capacity long-haul optical communication systems including integrated light sources, dispersion-managed soliton, WDM submarine cable systems, and spatial multiplexing.