Bell Labs Researcher Wins Tyndall Award

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that Dr. Randy Giles, director of the optical subsystems and advanced photonics department at Bell Laboratories, has received the 2010 John Tyndall Award, one of the most prestigious commendations in the optical telecommunications community.

The award, sponsored by the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the IEEE Photonics Society, recognizes Giles for “seminal contributions to advanced lightwave communications networks.”

These contributions include his work with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, fiber Bragg grating-based subsystems and MEMS cross-connects.

Named for the 19th-century scientist who first demonstrated the phenomenon of total internal reflection, the Tyndall Award recognizes an individual who has made pioneering, highly significant or continuing technical or leadership contributions to fiber optics technology.

Of the 24 Tyndall Awards given since the program’s inception in 1987, nearly half have been accorded scientists who made their discoveries and innovations while at Bell Labs. Other Tyndall Award winners from Bell Labs include Joe C. Campbell, Robert W. Tkach and Emmanuel Desurvire.

Giles is a graduate of the universities of Victoria and Alberta, both in Canada. Before joining Bell Labs in 1986, he worked on Nortel’s first gigabit optical transmission system. In 2008, he was honored by the Finnish government as Millennium Technology Prize laureate for development of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier. He won the Fraunhofer Award & Burley Prize in 2004 and was presented the Discover Award in 2000 for the invention of the MEMS-based optical cross-connect switch.

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