Professor of optical communications and networks at University College London, a fellow of the Royal Society, made a CBE for services to engineering, and the first woman to receive the Institute of Physics’ Thomas Young Medal and Prize (in 2021) for contributions to the field of optical communications, it would be unusual if an engineer of Polina Bayvel’s stature did not feature in the Photonics100.
As well as heading UCL’s Optical Networks Group, Bayvel currently leads the EPSRC Programme Grant TRANSNET (transforming optical networks for the cloud through the combination of machine learning and intelligent transceivers) and believes that ‘adaptive, intelligent low-delay, ultrawideband optical networks for the cloud and the devices needed to achieve this’ will be the next significant development once network design challenges are overcome.
You can find Bayvel online at twitter.com/bayvel_p or at www.linkedin.com/in/polina-bayvel-90604a13/. She is giving a plenary talk at ECOC 2023 in Glasgow.
Organisation: UCL, Dept of Electronic & Electrical Engineering
Role: Head, Optical Networks Group, Professor of Optical Communications & Networks
Based in: London
Education: UCL – BSc (Eng) 1986 and PhD (1990) – Investigation of stimulated Brillouin Scattering in single-mode optical fibre ring resonators. Then worked as systems engineer in STC and Nortel designing optical communications networks.