People

Mark Shtaif - Principal Investigator (Israel)

Mark Shtaif received his MSc and PhD degrees in electrical engineering at the Technion in 1993 and 1997, respectively. In 1997 he joined the Light-wave Networks Research Department at AT&T Labs Research as Senior and then Principal Member of Technical Staff. At AT&T his work centered on modeling and characterization of optical fiber communication systems focusing on propagation effects in optical fibers including fiber nonlinearities, polarization mode dispersion, special modulation formats and interaction of signals and noise. During his employment he consulted to the AT&T business units on the integration of fiber-optic technologies. In 2000 he became a Principal Architect in Celion Networks, an optical networking company, where he worked on the analysis and design of long-haul optical transmission systems. In April 2002 he joined the School of Electrical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University, where he is teaching and conducting research in areas related to fiber-optics and optical communications. Prof. Shtaif is a fellow of the IEEE and of the Optical Society of America (OSA).

Elisa Razzoli is administrative at PNNL of CNIT in Pisa. She graduated in Doctor in Economics (1997) at University of Parma. She has strong experience in project management and personnel resources administration.

Antonio Mecozzi is Professor and the Director of Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences of the University of L’Aquila (UNIVAQ), Italy. Previously, he worked for fifteen years at the Fondazione Ugo Bordoni in Rome. He holds numerous patents, and he is the author of over 170 publications in international journals and of numerous presentations, many invited, at international conferences. His areas of interest include studies on soliton transmission, laser mode-locking, nonlinear propagation in fiber, polarization mode dispersion, physics and applications of semiconductor optical amplifiers, optical amplification, noise, and optical and quantum cryptography. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1999) and of the IEEE (2003).

Enrico Forestieri received the Dr. Ing. degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Pisa in 1988. From 1989 to 1991 he has been a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Parma, working on optical communication systems. From 1991 to 2000 he was a Research Scientist and Faculty Member of the University of Parma. Since 2001 he has been with Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), where he currently is Professor of Telecommunications. His research interests are in the general area of digital communication theory and optical communication systems, with special attention to adaptive optical and electronic equalization, channel coding, and advanced modulation formats for optical systems. Currently, he serves as director of the PNNL at CNIT.

Cristian Antonelli is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at UNIVAQ. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from UNIVAQ, Italy, in 2002 and 2006, respectively. Since 2007 he has been a senior research scientist first at CNISM, the Italian inter-university consortium for the physics of matter, and then at the UNIVAQ. He performs research in the area of fiber-optic communications, with focus on the analysis of various propagation-related aspect, and systems and sub-systems modeling. He co-authored more than 40 papers in international journals, and about 40 papers in leading international conferences. He is a co-inventor of 5 US patents. He is in charge of Optical Communications-related activities within the INCIPICT project.

Andrea Marotta received the B.SC. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Engineering from University of L'Aquila, Italy. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Information Engineering Computer Science and Mathematics at UNIVAQ. He is spending a one year period as visiting Ph.D. at SSSA in Pisa performing research on 5G Radio Access Network design. He performs research on 5G functional split, function placement optimisation, TDM-PON Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation schemes for 5G.

Francesco Fresi received the Ph.D. Degree from SSSA in Pisa, Italy, in 2009. From 2010 to 2016 he was Assistant Professor at the SSSA Institute of Communication. He’s currently research fellow at SSSA. He actively contributed in several European and National research projects on next generation optical networks, as well as technology transfer projects with industry. His research activity is focused on high capacity optical communications for next generation elastic networks, including direct and coherent detection, signal processing and data-plane support to network optimization. He is (co-)author of more than a hundred publications in international journals, conference proceedings and patents.

Muhammad Imran received the B.Sc. Electrical Engineering in 2003 from University of Engineering & Technology Taxila, Pakistan. From 2004 to 2010, he served in Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) as Senior Engineer in Optical Fiber Networks Department. In 2010, he was selected for Erasmus Mundus Scholarship for Masters on Photonic Network Engineering (MAPNET) and received his double degree from Aston University UK and SSSA Italy. In 2016 he received PhD degree at SSSA where he has currently a post-doc fellowship. His research interests include High capacity optical communications, optical frequency combs and SDM networks.

Nicola Sambo received the Laurea degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy and the Ph.D. degree at SSSA, Pisa. Currently, he is Assistant Professor at SSSA, Pisa, Italy. His work is interdisciplinary, ranging from signal transmission to control plane for optical networking. He collaborated and collaborates with several industrial and academic partners such as Ericsson Research (Italy), France Télécom and Orange Lab (Lannion, France), Telefonica (Spain), Telecom Italia, Nokia Bell Labs (France), and Coriant (Germany). He took part to several international projects such as EU FP7 STRONGEST and IDEALIST, EU H2020 ORCHESTRA. He is author of about 80 publications including international journals, conference proceedings, and patents.

Vito Sorianello received the PhD degree in Electronic Engineering in 2010 from University "Roma Tre" of Rome (Italy). He spent three years as postdoctoral research fellow at the Nonlinear Optics and OptoElectronics Lab of University "Roma Tre" of Rome (Italy) being involved as responsible for the fabrication and characterization processes of Germanium on Silicon photodetectors. He is currently researcher at the PNNL (CNIT) of Pisa since 2013. His main research interests are the modeling, design, and characterization of optoelectronic components and systems for the Silicon Photonics platform. He is currently involved in several application-oriented research project in collaboration with national and international research institutions and industries.

Ori Golani is a Ph.D. student in the school of electrical engineering in Tel Aviv University. His expertise is in the fields of optics, optical communication, and digital signal processing. The present focus of his research is nonlinear effects in optical communication systems, and particularly statistical modeling and mitigation of nonlinear interference noise. Education: B.Sc. in computer engineering and applied physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007-2011. M.Sc. in applied physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011-2014. Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Tel Aviv University, 2014-present

Dan M. Marom is a Full Professor in the Applied Physics Department at Hebrew University, Israel, heading the Photonic Devices Group and currently serving as the Department Chair. He received the B.Sc. Degree in Mechanical Engineering and the M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering, both from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, in 1989 and 1995, respectively, and was awarded a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in 2000. His 20+ year research career in optical communications started during his Master’s degree, where he investigated free-space, polarization rotation based bypass-exchange (2×2) space switches, which led to the founding of a start-up company. In his doctoral dissertation he demonstrated real-time optical signal processing using parametric nonlinearities applied to spectrally dispersed light, for possible modulation and detection schemes in serial ultrafast communications (tera-baud rate and beyond). From 2000 until 2005, he was a Member of the Technical Staff at the Advanced Photonics Research Department of Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, where he invented and headed the research and development effort of MEMS based wavelength-selective switching solutions for optical networks. Since 2005, he has been with the Applied Physics Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, where he leads a research group pursuing his research interests in creating photonic devices and sub-systems for switching and manipulating optical signals, in guided-wave and free-space optics solutions using light modulating devices, nonlinear optics, and compound materials. Prof. Marom is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and a Senior Member of the IEEE Photonics Society. He was awarded the IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer Award for 2014 and 2015, and is currently serving on the Society's Board of Governors. From 1996 through 2000, he was a Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellow at UCSD, and was a Peter Brojde Scholar in 2006-2007. Prof. Marom will give a Tutorial on optical switching of spatial and spectral communication channels in Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) 2018, as well as an Invited Talk at Photonic Networks and Devices (NETWORK) 2018. He also serves as Program co-Chair for Photonics in Switching and Computing (PSC) 2018, and Steering Committee Chair for the International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN). Next OMN meeting to take place in Lausanne, Switzerland, August 2018.