The industry’s most innovative people 2024 Stephen Alexander Organisation: Ciena
Role: Senior Vice-President & Chief Technology Officer
Based in: Hanover, Maryland, US
Education: Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology
Stephen Alexander joined Ciena in 1994 and was one of the then start-up company’s first employees. On his journey to Chief Technical Officer,
Alexander managed teams in a number of departments at Ciena, including Transport and Switching, Data Networking, and Lightwave Systems. Stephen leads the R&D team at Ciena and was instrumental in the launch of the latest terabit optical engine (Wavelogic6) in 2023. Alexander currently sits on the board
of several telecoms groups including the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry
Tilo Steinmetz
Organisation: Menlo Systems Role: Product Manager
Tilo Steinmetz, a product manager with Menlo Systems, is working on laser frequency combs for astronomical spectrograph calibration, so-called astrocombs (an astrocomb from Menlo Systems is analysing starlight from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile). “High-precision calibration of high-
resolution spectrographs is essential for the search for exoplanets,” says Steinmetz. His research priority in the coming year will be “extending the spectral bandwidth of our Astrocombs to open the system
Based in: Munich, Germany Education: PhD, Physics, LMU Munich
to a wider range of users”. His work will build on what Steinmetz says is his proudest moment in photonics so far – the realisation of the first calibration of an astronomical spectrograph with a laser frequency comb. “This achievement was a significant breakthrough in the field of astronomical instrumentation, the technique revolutionised the precision and accuracy of spectroscopic measurements in astronomy,” he says. You can view Steinmetz’s research profile
at
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tilo- Steinmetz.
Tim Baldsiefen
Organisation: Photonics Precision Engineering
Role: CTO/ Co-Founder
Tim Baldsiefen is currently working on optical design, metrology design and system engineering at industrial optical design experts Photonics Precision Engineering (PPE), based in Jena, Germany. Previously head of R&D at Jenoptik (Shanghai) Precision Instrument and Equipment, Baldsiefen says his research priority in the coming year will be metasurfaces. Photonics Precision Engineering has received EU funding for research and development in the field of meta-optics and the firm plans to use
the technology to offer customers more compact, lighter and more cost-effective systems in the future. Baldsiefen believes that improvements in augmented reality optics are among the most significant photonics technologies to emerge in the past 12 months and that the founding of his company has been his proudest moment in photonics so far. Globally, he says a US-China trade war is
probably the biggest potential threat facing the photonics sector, and closer to home in Germany says finding competent staff is one of the biggest challenges.
Based in: Jena, Germany Education: PhD
Solutions and 5g Americas, and has won several industry accolades, including the IEEE Communications Society Industrial Innovation Award. He has also been an Associate Editor for the IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications & Networking (JOCN) and the Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT), as well as a member of the Federal Communications Commission Technological Advisory Council. Stephen has been granted 23 patents and authored a text on Optical Communication Receiver Design, alongside a number of conference presentations and journal articles.
48 Photonics100 2024
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