Two student awards will be handed out at this year’s Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC) being held this week, March 22-26 in San Diego. Corning and the OSA Foundation will announce the winner of the Corning Outstanding Student Paper Competition, and Infinera and OSA will announce the Infinera Outstanding Student Recognition prize.The seven finalists competing for the Corning award were selected from a record 425 student paper submissions. During this year’s show, the finalists will present their research and will be judged by the conference general chairs and program chairs based on innovation, research excellence and author presentation skills. The grand-prize winner will receive $1,500 and two papers of honorable mention will receive $1,000 each during the post-deadline paper session at OFC/NFOEC on Thursday, March 26. “Every year the Corning Outstanding Student Paper Competition draws submissions from some of the most promising students in optical communications and networking, and this year is no different,” said Biswanath Mukherjee of the University of California at Davis and one of this year’s OFC/NFOEC technical program chairs. “These students have an understanding of the field far beyond their years and to recognize their work with this award is an honor for the committee.” Finalists for the Corning award are: • Mohammad Alfiad, Eindhoven University of Technology, The NetherlandsPaper: 111-Gb/s POLMUX-RZ-DQPSK Transmission over LEAF: Optical Versus Electrical Dispersion Compensation • Cleitus Antony, University College Cork, IrelandPaper: SOA Based Upstream Packet Equalizer in 10Gb/s Extended-Reach PONs • Jeffrey Lee, Eindhoven University of Technology, The NetherlandsPaper: Discrete Multitone Modulation for High-Speed Data Transmission over Multimode Fibers Using 850-nm VCSEL • Quoc Thai Nguyen, FOTON-ENSSAT, FrancePaper: 16x2.5 Gbit/s Downstream Transmission in Colorless WDM-PON Based on Injection-Locked Fabry-Perot Laser Diode Using a Single Quantum Dash Mode-Locked Fabry-Perot Laser as Multi-Wavelength Seeding Source • Mamoru Takagi, University of Tokyo, JapanPaper: 400Gb/s Hybrid Optical Switching Demonstration Combining Multi-Wavelength OPS and OCS with Dynamic Resource Allocation • Ming-Chun Tien, University of California at Berkeley, USAPaper: Optofluidic Assembly of InGaAsP Microdisk Lasers on Si Photonic Circuits with Submicron Alignment Accuracy • Bo Zhang, University of Southern California, USAPaper: Polarization-Based Fast-Swept Optical Spectrum AnalyzerThe Infinera Outstanding Student Recognition prize finalists were selected form the pool of student submissions to the Optoelectronic Devices category for this year’s show. The prize will go to a student that exhibits outstanding optical communications research in the area of optoelectronic devices and photonics integration.Submissions were reviewed and scored by the OFC/NFOEC technical program committee and finalists were selected based on standard OFC/NFOEC paper review criteria. Finalists will also be judged by the conference general chairs, program chairs and a representative from Infinera based on their innovation and research excellence. A $1,500 prize will be bestowed upon the winner during the OSA Foundation reception at this year's show.“We are very pleased to offer this new award to up-and-coming researchers in optoelectronics,” said Dave Welch, co-founder and chief marketing and strategy officer of Infinera. “Infinera believes innovation is critical to the future of our industry and this award will help stimulate and recognize innovation among the next generation of scientists and engineers.”Finalists for the Infinera award are: • Akram Akrout, Lab de Photonique et Nanostructures, CNRS, FrancePaper: Generation of 10 GHz Optical Pulses with Very Low Timing Jitter Using One Section Passively Mode Locked Quantum Dash Based Lasers Operating at 1.55 µm • Aaron Albores-Mejia, COBRA Research Institute, Eindhoven University of Technology, The NetherlandsPaper: Low-Penalty Monolithically-Cascaded 1550nm-Wavelength Quantum-Dot Crossbar Switches • Rene Bonk, Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics, University of Karlsruhe, GermanyPaper: 1.3/1.5 µm QD-SOAs for WDM/TDM GPON with Extended Reach and Large Upstream/Downstream Dynamic Range • Chen Chen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USAPaper: Push-Pull Modulation of Coupled-Cavity VCSELs • Alberto Gatto, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, ItalyPaper: VCSEL to VCSEL Injection Locking for Uncompensated 40-km Transmission at 10 Gb/s • David Geisler, University of California at Davis, USAPaper: 3 b/s/Hz 1.2 Tb/s Packet Generation Using Optical Arbitrary Waveform Generation Based Optical Transmitter • Ming-Fang Huang, Georgia Institute of Technology, USAPaper: 42.8-Gb/s Chirp-Managed Signal Transmission over 640-km SSMF with Large Dispersion Tolerance • C. H. Kwok, Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UKPaper: Two-Electrode High Power Tapered Laser with up to 40.5 W/A Static Modulation Efficiency and 700 Mb/s Direct Modulation Capability • Sheng Liu, Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, UKPaper: An Optical Frequency Comb Generator as a Broadband Pulse Source • Vojtech Olle, Centre for Photonic Systems, University of Cambridge, UKPaper: 20 GHz Picosecond Pulse Generation by a 1300nm Mode-Locked Quantum Dot Master Oscillator Power Amplifier • Devang Parekh, University of California at Berkeley, USAPaper: 90-km Single-Mode Fiber Transmission of 10-Gb/s Multimode VCSELs under Optical Injection Locking • Juan Petit, Institut Telecom, Telecom ParisTech, FrancePaper: Enhanced 10-Gb/s NRZ Transmission Distance Using Dual Modulation of an Integrated Electro-Absorption Modulated Laser Transmitter • Molly Piels, Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, USAPaper: Microwave Nonlinearities in Ge/Si Avalanche Photodiodes Having a Gain-Bandwidth Product of 300 GHz • Xiankai Sun, California Institute of Technology, USAPaper: Hybrid Electrically Pumped Evanescent Si/InGaAsP Lasers • Ming-Chun Tien, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California at Berkeley, USAPaper: Optofluidic Assembly of InGaAsP Microdisk Lasers on Si Photonic Circuits with Submicron Alignment Accuracy • Haibo Wang, University of Cambridge, UKPaper: Lossless Multistage SOA Switch Fabric Using High Capacity Monolithic 4x4 SOA Circuits • Benjamin Wohlfeil, Technische Universitaet Berlin, GermanyPaper: Thermal Limits for Integration of Directly Modulated Lasers with Driver IC on SOI • Panagiotis Zakynthinos, National Technical University of Athens, GreecePaper: Wavelength Conversion for NRZ Signals with Enhanced Regenerative Characteristics • Wissem Sfar Zaoui, University of California at Santa Barbara, USAPaper: Origin of the Gain-Bandwidth-Product Enhancement in Separate-Absorption-Charge-Multiplication Ge/Si Avalanche Photodiodes • Lin Zhang, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, USAPaper: A High-Speed Silicon Modulator Based on an Embedded-Ring-Resonator StructureFor more information, visit: www.ofcnfoec.org