Infinera Co-Founder Wins Tyndall Award

David F. Welch, co-founder, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Infinera Corp., has been awarded the 2011 John Tyndall Award by The Optical Society of America (OSA) and IEEE Photonics Society.

The award recognizes his contributions to the field of optical communications systems, including the development and manufacture of photonic integrated circuits, semiconductor and Nd:YAG lasers, fiber lasers and amplifiers as well as devices associated with nonlinear optical materials.

Welch received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Cornell University. He then went on to Spectra Diode Labs, where he worked as a research scientist and eventually vice president of research.

Welch has published more than 250 articles and owns 125 patents. He received the Adolph Lomb Award from OSA in 1992, the Engineering Achievement Award from LEOS in 1998 and the OSA Joseph Fraunhofer/Robert M. Burley Award in 1999. He serves on the board of directors of both OSA and Infinera.

The Tyndall Award, co-sponsored by OSA and the IEEE Photonics Society, is the highest accolade in the optical telecommunications community.

Welch will be presented the award during the plenary session of the 2011 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC) held at the Los Angeles Convention Center March 6 through 10.

Infinera provides digital optical networking systems to telecommunications carriers worldwide.

For more information, visit: www.infinera.com