ATLANTA, March 25 -- Bell Labs scientist Andrew Chraplyvy, a pioneer in the development of high-capacity optical fiber communications systems, received the Optical Society of America's (OSA) 2003 John Tyndall Award today at the Optical Fiber Communications 2003 (OFC) conference, which is being held here this week. Chraplyvy is director of the lightwave systems research department at Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies. The award, co-sponsored by OSA and the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, is named for the 19th-century British scientist who first demonstrated the phenomenon of total internal reflection. It recognizes individuals who have made significant or continuing technical or leadership contributions to fiber optics technology. Chraplyvy was honored for "pioneering research on optical fiber nonlinearities and their dispersion management, and leading wavelength-division-multiplexed fiber transmission systems beyond terabit/second capacities." Chraplyvy recently used his expertise with dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) and high-speed optical transmission to contribute to the development of Lucent's LambdaXtreme Transport optical networking system. In the 1990s, Chraplyvy also helped develop the world's first nonzero dispersion fiber to meet the demands of long-distance service providers for increased bandwidth, and to fully support the rapidly advancing technologies in optically amplified, high-bit-rate, DWDM transmission systems. Chraplyvy joined Bell Labs in 1980 after receiving an undergraduate degree in physics from Washington University in St. Louis, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Cornell University. He is a Bell Labs Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and a member of the IEEE. For more information, visit: www.bell-labs.com