It’s perhaps no surprise that Liam Barry makes the Photonics100, as he was admitted to the Royal Irish Academy in 2019, holds ten electro-optics patents, and is co-founder of two successful photonics companies, Southern Photonics and Pilot Photonics.
The photonics industry is not immune to the energy crisis, suggests his response when asked what the biggest challenge of 2023 will be. Barry said: ‘The need to reduce energy consumption and focus on developing photonic technologies that are energy-efficient.’
He believes the introduction of high-speed free space optical links for terrestrial/space communications and sensor applications will be the most significant development in his area of research over the next 12 months. He also highlights the work being done by Drs. Colm Browning and Xing Ouyang into how photonics technologies can enable 6G communications systems. ‘I am also following the work of Darko Zibar from DTU in Denmark, looking at how machine learning technologies can enhance photonics systems.’
Completing his own PhD in French may be the reason for Barry’s belief that new photonics researchers should gain experience in different countries and environments. He said his supervisors in France Telecom Labs were a huge help to his career, as ‘they had a wealth of knowledge spanning from basic device physics to communications and networks, and could understand the interaction between all these areas’.
Prof Barry can be found online at https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-barry-71b211/ and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Liam-Barry-2.
He plans to attend the Optical Fibre Communications Conference and European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC)
Organisation: Dublin City University
Role: Professor of Photonics Systems
Based in: Dublin, Ireland
Education: B.E. in Electronic Engineering, University College Dublin
M.Eng.Sc. in Optical Systems, University College Dublin
PhD in Photonic Devices and Networks, University of Rennes 1