TXP Corp. of Richardson, Texas, an original design manufacturer for the communications industry, announced that Masoud Vaziri, PhD, MBA, has been appointed vice president of photonics. Vaziri will oversee the photonics laboratory and support the ONT team (the former Siemens optical network terminal development team hired in late 2006) with interoperability activities and new product development. Vaziri has over 10 years of senior industry experience. Prior to joining TXP, he served as vice president of photonics systems at Menara Networks. He began his career in 1995 as a member of the scientific staff for optical system design at Nortel Networks, helping design its first 10 Gb/s system and optical measurement techniques, and later rejoined the company as director of Lightwave System Design from 2000-03, leading a 15-member OPTera LH4000 optical system design, test and verification team. He worked at Siemens ICN from 1998-2000 as a member of the technical staff and technology group manager, developing the optical system characterization methodology for TransXpress Infinity, a 10 Gb/s DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) system. He also led interoperability tests with Fujitsu and Hitachi, supervised technical writing of optical system startup, test and verification procedures, and conducted various design and technical support activities.