The industry’s most innovative people 2024 Nicolas Fontaine Organisation: Nokia Bell Labs


Role: Member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories


Nicolas Fontaine joined the Advanced Photonics Division of Bell Laboratories as a technical staff member in 2010. As part of his role, he develops devices for space-division multiplexing in multicore and few-mode fibres, builds wavelength cross-connects and filtering devices, and investigates spectral slice coherent receivers for THz bandwidth waveform measurement. The previous recipient of the Tingye


Li Innovation Prize in 2021 as author of an exceptional accepted paper at OFC, Fontaine has authored and co-authored hundreds of research papers. The most recent


Niels Quack


Organisation: University of Sydney Role: Associate Professor


Niels Quack and his team are researching novel types of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) actuators, such as nanomechanical piezo-actuators in silicon photonics, and expect to produce response times at least 10 times faster than state-of-the-art components, along with reduced carbon footprints. Possible applications include beam


steering for lidar 3D sensing that can be used in autonomous vehicles, programmable photonic chips that can be reconfigured to perform different functions, and information processing in quantum photonics. “It is amazing to imagine,” says Quack,


Based in: Sydney, Australia


Education: PhD, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich


“that we can control the flow of light on-chip by the mechanical movement of a waveguide, that is only half a micrometre in width with a precision of a few nanometres. It is very impressive to hold a silicon photonic MEMS wafer in your hand, which can host millions of individually movable waveguide devices.” “MEMS accelerometers, gyroscopes and


microphones are already widely used in consumer electronics,” he says. “Maybe one day there will be a new class of devices in our mobile phones, such as air quality sensors or micro-3D cameras based on silicon photonic MEMS!”


Radhakrishnan Nagarajan Organisation: Marvell


Role: Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer


“We are entering an unprecedented era of AI-driven economy,” says Radhakrishnan Nagarajan, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at semiconductor manufacturer Marvell. “These massive, generative AI


infrastructures consume so much power and the communities where they are located are baulking at the social and environmental costs of increased energy consumption.” That’s why he believes there’s a need for


low-cost, low-power optical connectivity. Nagarajan is working on 2.5D/3D heterogeneous integration of electronics


Based in: Santa Clara, CA, US Education: PhD


and photonics, for compact, low-power optical interconnects for data centre and AI infrastructure applications, with a focus on cost-effective, high-speed, and highly integrated optical interconnects for GPU-to- GPU applications for the coming year. Photonics for lidar and autonomous


vehicles have shown significant development in the past year, he believes, but further work is necessary: “Robo taxis are being deployed in cities like San Francisco and there is an increasing need for intelligent sensors to make these deployments possible.”


Based in: Holmdel, New Jersey, US


Education: PhD, Electrical Engineering, University of California, Davis


focused on the development of a microwave electromagnetic field sensor on thin-film lithium niobate using photonic down- conversion detection. It is believed this could be scaled to much higher frequencies and therefore be an attractive option for remote detection of microwave electromagnetic signals. This year Fontaine was honoured by the IEEE Photonics Society with a Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contributions to the mentorship and education of students and young professionals. Outside of work, he is a keen jazz pianist, hiker and skier.


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