The industry’s most innovative people 2024 Matthew Welch


Organisation: G&H Role: Chief Engineer, Fibre Optic Systems


Matthew Welch is currently working on high-power optical amplifiers for free space optical communications with application to satellite communications – both inter-satellite and ground-to-space. The very high powers required in the


C-band amplifiers are very challenging and nonlinear effects need to be mitigated, but Welch is pioneering these systems and has been the author on a number of papers in this area. As G&H’s Chief Engineer, Fibre Optic


Systems, he has been in post for more than four years, joining the organisation in 2016


Md Selim Habib


Organisation: Florida Polytechnic University Role: Assistant Professor


Md Selim Habib’s work on the design and fabrication of low loss hollow-core fibre could open up new possibilities for applications in the near-IR to mid-IR spectral range, while his research on light gas nonlinear interaction in hollow-core fibres has demonstrated the potential for new types of sensors and measurement techniques. His work on supercontinuum generation


could lead to the development of new light sources for spectroscopy and imaging applications, while his research on multi- mode nonlinear optics has the potential to


Based in: Lakeland, Florida, US


Education: PhD, Electrical and Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark


open up new possibilities for manipulating light and developing new photonic devices. He has been a featured editor on Optica's Applied Optics editorial board. Habib is a tenure-track Assistant


Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Institute of Technology (FIT). Prior to his current role, he held positions as an assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at Florida Polytechnic University and a postdoctoral research associate at CREOL, University of Central Florida.


Mehdi Namazi


Organisation: Qunnect Role: Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder


Mehdi Namazi is a trailblazer in the emerging field of quantum networks. His PhD thesis at the State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook was based on quantum memories, a key ingredient in building future quantum networks and eventually working towards the quantum internet. He brought this work out of a laboratory and towards commercialisation as one of the co-founders of start-up, Qunnect. It is focused on products that are designed for scalable networks, distributed quantum computing, and sensing. On World Quantum Day in April 2023, the


Based in: New York, US Education: PhD, Stony Brook University, US


company announced details of its new quantum entanglement source as part if a pilot scheme with GothamQ, a metropolitan network in New York City with more than 34km of fibre, offering what is realistically possible in a metropolitan scale for users who require a 24/7 quantum network with very high uptime. In 2022, Qunnect had raised $8m in funding for the test project. Prior to Qunnect, Namazi was awarded


the Yale Joint Quantum Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship and received his MSc in nanophysics on designing nanostructure solar cells at the University of Tehran in Iran.


Based in: Torquay, UK Education: PhD, University of Bath


as a photonics systems engineer, before being promoted in 2019. “There are a large number of


technologies that are required to produce optical links through space, and many entities are racing to produce them,” he says. “One key element is high-power optical amplification modules, which are required to overcome transmission losses between satellites that are thousands of kilometres apart.” G&H is at the forefront of this work


and produced the first commercial optical amplifier to be used in geostationary orbit.


40 Photonics100 2024


G&H


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