Marcus Weldon of Nokia Bell Labs, John C. Doyle at the California Institute of Technology, and Chengliang Zhang of China Telecom will headline the 2018 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) for optical communications and networking professionals. "OFC highlights the latest advancements in the optics industry,” said Xiang Liu, OFC general co-chair. “Marcus, John and Chengliang will provide their insights and thoughts on the current state and future trends of our industry. They will collectively cover hot topics such as groundbreaking optical innovations, data center connectivity, 5G-oriented optical networking, and the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in optical networks. With each breakthrough in optical communication and network technologies, the world comes closer together. It's an exciting time to be part of the industry, and the plenary program will provide a fascinating glimpse of where things are heading." Weldon first joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1995 as a post-doctoral researcher and was named the 13th president of Bell Labs in December 2013. He has championed many technological disruptions in telecommunications networks, from the evolution and convergence of networks to "all IP," the evolution of copper-based access networks to support sophisticated interference cancellation, the evolution of wireless networks to highly distributed networks of small cells, and the emergence of virtualization and software-defined networking as profound industry-changing forces that will drive a new integrated and federated network architecture and economics. For the past 40 years, Doyle has worked on the mathematical foundations for complex networks with applications in biology, technology, medicine, ecology, neuroscience and multiscale physics that integrates theory from control, computation, communication, optimization and statistics. His students and research group developed software packages like the Matlab Robust Control Toolbox and the Systems Biology Markup Language. He is currently the Jean-Lou Chameau Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering at Caltech. Zhang has worked extensively in the optical networks, SDN/NFV, and network evolution. From 1995 to 2002, he worked as an engineer and a director of the transmission and access research department at the China Information and Communication Research Institute where he engaged in research on optical networks. From 2002 to 2014, he was a deputy chief engineer at China Telecom Corp. Ltd. Beijing Research Institute (CTBRI), conducting research on optical networks and broadband networks. He is currently the vice president of the China Telecom Beijing Research Institute and the vice president of the optical committee at the China Institute of Communications. Managed by the Optical Society (OSA), OFC includes dynamic business programming, an exposition of more than 550 companies, and high-impact, peer-reviewed research that, combined, showcase the trends and pulse of the entire optical networking and communications industry.