On Feb. 3 2011, a symposium was held in the Blauwe Zaal on the occasion of the retirement of Prof. Djan Khoe. The title of the symposium “Trends in Photonic Communication Research and COBRA’s contributions” reflects the major role which Prof. Khoe has had in pushing forward the research in optical communication systems in TU/e to a worldwide recognized status. Coming from Philips Research, Prof. Khoe started as part-time professor at TU/e in 1983, and succeeded Prof. Van der Plaats as full-time professor in 1994, chairing the group Electro-Optical Communication Systems. Since then, the group has grown impressively, in number of young researchers (PhD students, post-doctoral researchers), in publications output, in attracted external funding, and in stature. One of the major achievements of Djan was the founding of the COBRA research institute, followed by the acquisition of the prestigious Dutch Top Research Institute Photonics award in 1998, bringing no less than 70Mfl funding, the largest external funding ever in TU/e’s history. He also was very active in professional societies, notably in the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (now IEEE Photonics Society) and in the Optical Society of America. He was President of IEEE LEOS in 2003, and he promoted its international expansion, among others by founding the IEEE LEOS Benelux chapter. On the national level, Djan was actively involved in setting research funding strategies, as a member of the STW Board and of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering and Innovation (AcTI nl).

 The Symposium on Feb. 3 was very well visited, including many attendees from abroad. After a welcome address by Prof. Ton Koonen, chairman of the Symposium, Prof. Ton Backx described Prof. Khoe’s contributions for the faculty Electrical Engineering and for TU/e. Prof. Ton Koonen (also chairman of the Symposium) and Prof. Harm Dorren highlighted the evolution and perspectives in research activities in the Electro-Optical Communication Systems group and in COBRA, respectively, and the pioneering roles of Prof. Khoe in this. And then it was the turn for a number of distinguished external invited speakers: Dr. Rod Alferness, Chief Scientist from Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories USA, Dr. Hideo Kuwahara, Fellow from Fujitisu Labs Japan, Prof. Yasuhiro Koike from Keio University Japan, and Prof. Paul Lagasse from University Ghent. They highlighted different aspects of the tremendous progress made in photonic communication research in the past decades, and the major role of Prof. Khoe in this research field.

Just a few minutes after Prof. Khoe has started his goodbye address as a big surprise for him, the mayor of Eindhoven, Mr. Rob van Gijzel rushed in. In an inspiring speech, the mayor outlined the importance of our research field for the region Eindhoven to get to the top of the innovation ladder. He applauded the great role Professor Khoe has taken in this, and honoured him by awarding him the very distinctive Royal medal o "Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau". A Great surprice and honour for Professor Khoe, well-deserved and accompanied by a standing ovation of the audience.

Further reading... (in Dutch)

This Review by Koenraad and Flatté describes the marked advances in the past decade towards observing, controllably creating and manipulating single dopants, as well as their application in devices.

This year, the school will take place on March 28-30, at the Domein Westhoek at Oostduinkerke. The 2011 school is devoted to “Waveguiding in  optics” and will comprise as usual invited talks, talks from IAP participants and informal talks between participants. For more information click here.

ECOC 2012 will be held September 16-20, 2012 in the RAI Congress Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ECOC is the leading conference on optical communication in Europe. In 2012, it is organised by COBRA - Eindhoven University of Technology in cooperation with IBBT - Ghent University. For more information click here.

Dr. Kevin Williams at the Electrical Engineering faculty has been awarded a VICI research grant for his proposal to research ultrafast opto-electronic chips. Williams is now the fourth researcher at TU Eindhoven who is known to have received a Vici award and the second from the COBRA research institute. For more information click here.

Last week Eindhoven saw the kick-off of the international R&D project PARADIGM. This project, which is led by Eindhoven University of Technology, is intended to standardize the development and production of optical chips, making them much cheaper and bringing all kinds of new products within arm’s reach. Click here for the press release.

Excellent research opportunities for excellent students: Learn about cutting-edge photonics research and get a chance to be selected for a PhD studentship in a leading university. For more information click here.

Two 'NWO Groot' subsidies have been granted to COBRA. The subsidies will be used for an optical waferscanner and a reactor for nanowires. See also this article in Dutch.

The cover of PRL on 26 February 2010 shows a topographic image of the GaAs(110) surface doped with Mn acceptors. The relative intensity and the symmetry of the Mn-induced contrast correspond to the position of the acceptors below the surface. The article can be found here.

The EuroPIC project aims to facilitate access by small companies to cost-effective Photonic Integrated Circuit manufacture in Europe. Read their Press Release.

Progress occurred in different sub-fields, utilizing different techniques to understand and manipulate dopant atoms and centers in different semiconductors. Now is the opportune moment to bring these communities together in a workshop that focuses on single dopant control (from 29th of March through 1st of April).

This knowledge and networking platform for the Dutch photonics industry is organised on the 30th of March 2010. For more info click here.

Excellent research opportunities for excellent students. Read more here.

Wednesday June 3, Maria Garcia Larrode won the award for the Best Doctoral Project of 2008 at the TU/e Academic Awards ceremony. Her thesis entitled "Radio over fiber distributed antenna systems for in-building broadband wireless services" dealt with radio-over-fibre, and she received her PhD degree cum laude 10 March 2008 (promotor prof. Ton Koonen). The nominees Maria Garcia Larrode and Dirk van den Borne are both from the ECO group within COBRA.

Genexis BV and Professor Ton Koonen from Eindhoven University of Technology have won the ICTRegie 2009 Award for their joint innovation in the area of fiber-to-the-home. This new development - called FlexPON - enables multiple colors of light on a single optical fiber to be switched dynamically to end-users. In this way, communication bandwidth can be optimally distributed to end-users in response to their actual needs, while simultaneously saving cost and reducing power consumption.

Ir. S.C.J. Lee was ranked nr 1 In the Corning-OSA student paper competition for his paper entitled “Discrete Multitone Modulation for High-Speed Data Transmission over Multimode fibres using 850-nm VCSEL”

 

Ir. M. Al Fiad was ranked nr 2 (for the second (2008) time) for his paper entitled “Transmission of 11 x 111 Gbit/s POLMUX-RZ-DQPSK over 2000 km of LEAF w/wo Optical Dispersion “

 

Item about power efficiency of Information and Communication Technology.

The COBRA Annual Report 2007 has been added to the website. You can download it here.

Bas Huiszoon, who has just recently received his doctoral degree in the Electro-Optical Communications group,  has been selected as a winner of one of the 2008 LEOS Graduate Student Fellowships, a one-time award of $5000 for his outstanding accomplishments and academic record in the field of lasers and electro-optics.  In addition he receives complimentary registration and a travel grant of up to $2500 for the LEOS Annual Meeting in Newport Beach, CA 9-13 November 2008, during which he will be presented with his Fellowship at the Awards Banquet.

On September 26th, COBRA and AIST Japan organise a workshop on all optical signal processing for future networks.

Martin Hill and colleagues at COBRA and KAIST have reported the smallest electrically pumped laser demonstrated so far.  Nanolasers:  Goldfinger laser.

Ni Yan's paper (13A1-3) entitled "40 Gb/s wavelength multicast  via SOA-MZI and applications" with co-authors Silveira, T.,  Teixeira, A.,  Ferreira, A.,  Tangdiongga, E.,  Monteiro, P. and Koonen, A.M.J. won the Best Paper Award at the OECC/IOOC 2007 in Yokohama, Japan.

Ling Xu's paper entitled "1.55 um extremely efficient and polarization insensitive tunable Mach-Zehnder wavelength duplexer based on an InGaAsP/InP ridge waveguide structure" with co-authors Leijtens, X.J.M., Sander-Jochem, M.J.H., de Vries, T., Oei, Y.S., van Veldhoven, P.J., Nötzel, R., Smit, M.K. won the Best Paper Award at the  APOC 07,  Wuhan,  China