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Plenary Speakers

Dr. Ruben S. Luis

National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT), Japan

Ruben S. Luis is a Chief Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT) in Japan, specializing in cutting-edge optical fiber transmission systems and spatial division multiplexing. Since joining NICT in 2016, he has focused in advancing ultra-high-capacity transmission technologies, particularly in multi-core and multi-mode fiber systems. Dr. Luis earned his doctoral degree in 2007 from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and his professional journey spans both academia and industry. An active contributor to the scientific community, Dr. Luis is a senior member of IEEE, a fellow member of Optica, and serves as an associate editor for IEEE Photonics Technology Letters and the IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology.

A quest for capacity:
SDM and beyond

Abstract Over the past 15 years, optical fiber systems have achieved a remarkable 100-fold increase in capacity, enabled by breakthroughs in fiber design, optical amplification, and advanced digital signal processing. We will review the technologies that unlocked this dramatic growth and explore some strategic insights for shaping the next generation of high-capacity optical communication systems.

Dr. Peter Winzer

Vice President of Systems Architecture, Ciena, USA

Peter Winzer is Vice President of Systems Architecture at Ciena. He helps drive Ciena’s strategy and innovation in AI interconnect architectures. Peter joined Ciena as part of the acquisition of Nubis Communications, the company he founded to advance highly integrated, massively parallel optical and electrical communication interfaces. Before founding Nubis, he spent many years at Bell Labs, where he set multiple high-speed optical transmission records, contributed to major optical product developments, and led fiber-optic transmission research. He has published over 500 scientific papers, holds more than 100 granted patents, and has received numerous accolades, including the John Tyndall Award. Peter is a Bell Labs Fellow, a Fellow of IEEE, Optica, and the US National Academy of Inventors, and is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Eindhoven. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology, Program Chair of ECOC, and Program/General Chair of OFC. Peter earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria.

AI Cluster Communications

Abstract The performance of ever-growing AI clusters is severely limited by interface bandwidths, from memory access to scale-up, scale-out, and scale-across. This talk will explore the I/O needs in AI clusters and review challenges and solutions, from ultra-dense wide-and-parallel die-to-die interfaces to co-packaged copper and optical scale-up and scale-out sockets all the way to coherent scale-across systems.

Prof. Francesco Poletti

University of Southampton, UK

Prof. Francesco Poletti has spent his career exploring how light can travel faster and more efficiently through optical fibres. As head of the Hollow Core Fiber group at the University of Southampton’s ORC and Chief Scientist at Microsoft Azure Fiber, he is helping shape technologies that promise to transform the way we connect and compute. His invention—the Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fiber—has unlocked new potential for ultra-low latency networks, leading to the creation of Lumenisity, a spin-out acquired by Microsoft in 2022. With over 500 scientific papers and 25 patents, Prof. Poletti’s work is paving the way for future breakthroughs in cloud infrastructure, AI, and global communications.

Less Glass, More Speed: Unlocking Performance with Hollow-Core Fibers

Abstract

Abstract Hollow-core fibre technology represents a fundamental shift in optical transmission: by removing material from the core, we can unlock new levels of performance that conventional solid fibres cannot achieve. This keynote will trace the evolution of hollow-core fibres from early concepts to today’s advanced designs, highlighting key breakthroughs such as the Double Nested Antiresonant Nodeless Fiber (DNANF). Recent progress in fabrication and deployment will be discussed, along with the unique advantages these fibers offer for ultra-low latency and high-capacity data transmission. Finally, the talk will explore a broad range of future applications—from cloud infrastructure and AI to quantum computing and secure communications, geothermal energy extraction, and advanced sensing—where hollow-core fibres have the potential to redefine the limits of optical technology and enable innovations across multiple industries.

Prof. Olga Smirnova

Max-Born-Institut, Germany

Olga Smirnova graduated from the Physics Department of the Moscow State University in 1996 and received her PhD there in 2000, continuing as assistant professor. In 2003 she received the Lise-Meitner Fellowship of Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and joined the Vienna University of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2005 she moved to the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa, Canada, where she became a permanent staff scientist in 2006. In 2009 she received the SAW award of the Leibniz society and moved to the Max Born Institute to establish her own Strong Field Theory research group, which she continues to lead. Since 2016 she also holds full professorship at the Technical University Berlin. In 2010 Olga has received the Karl-Scheel-Preis of Physikalischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin, in 2020 she has received the Ahmed Zewail Award in Ultrafast Science & Technology of the American Chemical Society and in 2022 Mildred Dresselhaus Prize and Guest Professorship at Hamburg University. Olga’s current research focuses on imaging and control of ultrafast electron dynamics in atoms, solid state materials, and molecules, especially chiral molecules. Her research has been recently supported by the Horizon Europe ERC advanced grant.

Chirality in time: From Topological Bands to Spin Selectivity in light-driven chiral molecules

Abstract Chirality—the property that distinguishes left- and right-handed forms of matter—underpins diverse functionalities across scales, from molecules that come in two non-superimposable mirror-image forms known as enantiomers to chiral materials and photonic structures. Yet fast, sensitive, and robust enantio-specific detection remains a major challenge. Here, we introduce temporal chirality—chirality encoded in the time-dependent trajectories traced by vectors such as electric fields or induced polarizations—as a unifying framework that reveals highly efficient enantio-sensitive observables.
Synthetic chiral light provides a central example: the Lissajous figure traced by its electric-field vector forms a locally chiral three-dimensional trajectory in time. We show that randomly oriented chiral molecules driven by such fields form topological bands in the space of mutual light–molecule orientations, characterized by integer Chern numbers that flip sign with molecular or light’s handedness. This topological structure leads to quantised, robust enantio-sensitive signals. We further demonstrate that synthetic chiral light can be efficiently guided in an optical fibre, enabling enantio-sensitive harmonic emission from very small quantities of chiral molecules and opening pathways to compact microfluidic platforms for rapid chiral analysis.
Light-induced polarization in excited chiral molecules can also exhibit temporal chirality, generating geometric fields that influence photoelectron spin and give rise to new mechanisms of spin–chirality coupling. We find that any excited or photoionized chiral molecule can act as an enantio-sensitive molecular compass, defining an internal geometric axis even under isotropic illumination. Just as a traditional compass needle aligns with Earth’s magnetic field, the molecular compass aligns the electron spin with a built-in geometric direction inside the molecule — a direction defined by its handedness. In this way, the molecule generates its own “chiral north,” guiding the electron spin without any magnetic interaction. A complementary Berry-curvature-driven spin torque, activated by photon spin, produces a triple lock between molecular structure, photon spin, and electron spin—providing a geometric and topological foundation for the chirality-induced spin-selectivity (CISS) effect.

Prof. Wim Bogaerts

Ghent University – IMEC, Belgium

Wim Bogaerts is full professor in the Photonics Research Group at Ghent University and IMEC in Belgium. In the early 2000s he pioneered the use of CMOS fabrication tools to create photonic chips, building up IMEC’s silicon photonics technology. To support the technology developments, he also developed design automation tools for photonic circuits, which resulted in the founding of Luceda Photonics in 2014, bringing the design tool IPKISS to the market. Since 2016 he is back at Ghent University, focusing on the challenges and opportunities for large-scale photonic circuits and the new field of programmable photonics. He is an IEEE and OPTICA Fellow, and senior member of SPIE

Programmable Photonic Circuits for Signal Processing

Abstract Photonic integrated circuits are essential technology for telecom and datacom, especially AI datacenters. Large optical signal bandwidth, and high-speed electro-optic building blocks (modulators, detectors) makes photonics very suitable for data communication, but also for analog signal processing, both in the optical and the microwave domain. This is useful for communication, sensing, analog computing and many other applications. They are fabricated with the same technologies as microelectronics, and like electronic chips, we also expect photonic chips to be used in diverse application domains. Unfortunately, this is not really the case at the moment.
One reason for this is that photonic chips today are not very flexible. They are designed for one purpose, and every new function needs its own chip. This can be alleviated by making photonic chips more programmable, so new functionality can be implemented on existing chips. This can accelerate the development and innovation cycles with analog signal processing, opening up the capabilities of photonic chips to a much broader engineering community. We will introduce different classes of programmable photonic circuits, discuss the state of programmable photonics today, and illustrate this with some recent demonstrations from the work in Ghent University – IMEC. From there, we will take a look at the future, to the key challenges in the technology, but also to the opportunities to create a programmable photonic ecosystem.

Prof. Miguel González-Herráez

Institute of Optics of the Spanish Council for Research (CSIC), Spain

Miguel González-Herráez received the M.Eng. and D.Eng. degrees from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. In October 2004, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics, University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in June 2006 and later to Full Professor in January 2018. He is currently Full Professor in the Institute of Optics of the Spanish Council for Research (CSIC). He is the author or coauthor of >160 papers in international refereed journals and >180 conference contributions, and has given >30 invited/plenary talks at prestigious international conferences. His research interests cover the wide field of nonlinear interactions in optical fibers, with particular focus on distributed optical fiber sensing. Prof. González-Herráez has received several important recognitions to his research career, including two European Research Council Grants, the “Miguel Catalan” prize for young scientists given by the Comunidad de Madrid and the “Agustin de Betancourt” prize of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering.

Distributed Acoustic Sensing in Submarine Optical Fibers: Enhancing Cable Protection While Unlocking New Insights into the Ocean

Abstract Today, more than 98% of international data traffic travels through submarine fibre-optic cables, far surpassing the volume carried by satellites. Despite their strategic function, these cables are very fragile and unprotected. In this talk, I will show that Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) can provide essential information for protecting these extremely vital routes of information, with a very minor investment. Furthermore, I will show that these critical infrastructures also hold significant promise for geophysical monitoring on the ocean floor, a region where the scarcity of instruments currently limits our ability to quantify key Earth and climate processes such as water mixing and stratification. I will show in this talk that existing submarine optical fibre cables can be used, without major modification, to monitor ocean currents over long distances, to capture detailed observations of water-mixing phenomena occurring across tens of kilometres, and to measure and locate large mammals (whales) with unprecedented accuracy and without the need of dedicated observation campaigns. I will also discuss the potential for using parts of this global cable network as an early-warning system for tsunamis in vulnerable regions.