For the fourth year of our optical communications technology recognition program, we invited technology developers to submit products for review by our independent panel of judges in time for OFC. In some cases, that brought entries for products that will be introduced at this year's show.
Our Award Program Manager, Joseph Berthold, assigned each entry to be reviewed by judges knowledgeable in the relevant technology or application. They rated each entry on the following scale:
0-1: Useful product, yet commodity
2-3: Solid product with viable attributes that set it apart
3-4: Excellent product with technical features and performance that provide clear and substantial benefits
4-5: Superb product that sets new standard for performance and provides groundbreaking and new technical milestones.
Our panel included:
- Saravan Asthi, Senior Software Engineer, Cisco
- Robert Blum, director, strategic marketing and business development, Intel Corp.
- Phillip Chan, Director, IP Solutions R&D, Huawei
- Brandon Collings, CTO, Optical Communications, CCOP, Lumentum
- Mike Frankel, Ciena Fellow, Ciena
- Jim Hayes, president, The Fiber Optic Association
- Daryl Inniss, director of new business development, OFS
- Tom Issenhuth, Optical Network Architect, Microsoft
- Peter Jones, Principal Engineer, Cisco
- Bikash Koley, Distinguished Engineer & Director, Network Architecture, Engineering & Planning Google
- Vladimir Kozlov, founder and CEO, LightCounting
- Bob Lee, Technical Advisor Cable Television and industry veteran
- Patrick McLaughlin, editor in chief, Cabling Installation & Maintenance
- Lawrence O'Neill, Director, Mobile Backhaul Center of Excellence, Verizon Partner Solutions
- Jim Theodoras, vice president of global business development, ADVA Optical Networking
- Matt Traverso, Principal Engineer, Cisco
- Ken Williams, Cable Industry Consultant and industry veteran
- Dr. Tiejun J. (TJ) Xia, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Verizon
- Liyan Zhang, Director of Optical Network Technology, Cogent
We congratulate this year's participants for being brave enough to submit their products for review. As you'll see, the results indicate that innovation continues to be found across the fiber-optic communications landscape.
