Connecting and Inspiring Leaders in Optical Communications – Executive Forum 2013
Speaker Profiles
Stephen B. Alexander, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Ciena
With more than 20 years of telecom experience, Mr. Alexander is currently serving as Ciena’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Alexander has held a number of positions since joining the Company in 1994, including General Manager of Ciena's Transport & Switching and Data Networking business units, Vice President of Transport Products and Director of Lightwave Systems.
From 1982 until joining Ciena, Mr. Alexander was employed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he last held the position of Assistant Leader of the Optical Communications Technology Group. Mr. Alexander is an editor for the Journal of Optical Communications and Networking. He has served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission Technological Advisory Council, as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Lightwave Technology, as a member of the IEEE / LEOS Board of Governors, and was a General Chair of the conference on Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) in 1997.
Mr. Alexander received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Alain Couder, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Oclaro, Inc.
Mr. Couder has served as Chairman and CEO of Oclaro since July 2011 and was a director and CEO from August 2007 to July 2011. Prior to joining Oclaro in 2007, Mr. Couder was a Venture Advisor to Sofinnova Ventures, Inc., a venture capital company. Previously, Mr. Couder has held President and CEO positions at software and IP companies including Solid Information Technology Inc; Confluent Software, Inc., and IP Dynamics, Inc. He also served as COO of Agilent Technologies, Inc., a measurement and analysis company. Earlier in his career, Mr. Couder worked for Packard-Bell NEC, Groupe Bull, HP and IBM. He was previously a director at Sanmina-SCI.
Mr. Couder earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Ecole Superieure d'Electricite in Paris.
Stuart Elby, Chief Technologist of Digital Media Services, Verizon
Dr. Stuart Elby, Chief Technologist of Verizon Digital Media Services, is responsible for the overall solutions architecture, design and development of the media distribution platform supporting VDMS products.
Formerly, Stuart was responsible for developing Verizon's target network architecture and driving the industry to converge towards this target. He also managed the design and specification of Verizon's core services platforms including VoIP / IMS, video, cloud computing, and Verizon Wireless' open network service delivery platform.
Prior to joining Verizon, Stuart was a Research Associate at the NSF Center for Telecommunications Research at Columbia University performing R&D in all-optical networks and developing ATM/WDM platforms. In 1985, at a laser surgery start-up, Lasers for Medicine Inc., he was responsible for FDA clinical trials, product development, and brought the first disposal plastic fiber-optic system to the medical market. In 1982, he worked at StorageTek, contributing to the development of the first commercial optical disk storage system.
Stuart received a BS degree in Optical Engineering from the University of Rochester, NY in 1982 and received a MSEE and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989 and 1994, respectively. He serves on the advisory boards of several university/government/industry consortia. He lives with his wife and kids just south of the middle of nowhere, NJ.
Mattias Fridstrom, Vice President & Head of Technology, TeliaSonera International Carrier
Mattias Fridström joined Telia AB in Dec 1996 as Senior Project Manager for the development and installation of many International submarine cables around the world. In 1998 Mattias assumed the role within Telia International Carrier as head of the construction and implementation of the International Network within Europe and USA for the Carrier business. Between 2003 and 2010 he first headed up the Product Management side of TeliaSonera International Carrier for Voice, IP, Capacity and Infrastructure related services and then he had the strategic responsibility for the complete and combined National and International Wholesale Product Portfolio within the TeliaSonera Group. Since January 2011 he is the CTO of TeliaSonera International Carrier.
Mattias holds a M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from University of Wollongong, Australia
Bill Gartner, Vice President and General Manager of High End Routing & Optical Group, Cisco
Bill Gartner is VP/General Manager of Cisco's High End Routing & Optical Group, which includes Cisco’s portfolio of DWDM products as well as Cisco’s High End routers including CRS and ASR9K. Bill has P&L responsibility for this business and is responsible for strategic direction, product development and new product introduction.
Prior to joining Cisco, Bill was Chief Operating Officer of Meriton Networks (acquired by Xtera Networks). Prior to Meriton, Bill served as President and COO of Mahi Networks and COO of Photuris. Before joining Photuris, he was VP/GM of Lucent's Optical Networking Systems business, responsible for Metro, Access, and Long Haul DWDM Products.
Bill has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech, a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and an Executive Master’s in Technology Management from University of Pennsylvania/Wharton. He is a University of Pennsylvania Moore Fellow, and holds 3 patents.
Vijay Gill, General Manager, Global Foundation Services, Microsoft
Vijay Gill leads the Internet backbone and edge teams for Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services (GFS) team that supports the foundation infrastructure for over 200 Microsoft online services for consumers and businesses worldwide.
In May 2011, Vijay joined Microsoft as a Director of Engineering responsible for the Internet backbone, dark fiber, optical, and IP Services for GFS. He was promoted to GM in 2012.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Vijay was the leader of the Backbone engineering, Architecture, Network Security and Network Labs at Google, and was responsible for the network architecture encompassing the dark fiber network, optical, MPLS and edge networks, as well as the data center network design. He was instrumental in driving the networking design for the global backbone and pioneered the business case and implementation of secondary data center backbones, Google’s SDN and the CDN, which is now one of the largest in the world.
Vijay also spent five years at AOL, where he managed the network, peering and CDN teams for the ATDN network, a global backbone for AOL and Time Warner Cable. Prior to AOL, Vijay was the networking manager at AboveNet, responsible for global network design and architecture. Before AboveNet, Vijay was a lead engineer at Verizon/UUNET, where he led the multicast and MPLS projects.
Vijay holds multiple U.S. patents filed and has published several technical papers in various journals and conference proceedings, including seven IETF RFCs on multiple topics, including routing, security, multi-homing, MPLS and IPv6. He is frequently quoted in the press and is a featured speaker on network trends in the industry.
In 2007 and 2010, he was the recipient of the prestigious Google OC and EMG awards for exceptional work for his contributions to the CDN and bandwidth projects.
Ed Harstead, Leader, Technology Excellence Center, Chief Technology Office, Fixed Networks Division, Alcatel-Lucent
Ed Harstead's current role at Alcatel-Lucent is Lead Technologist for the Chief Technology Office of the Fixed Networks Division. His primary topics include next gen PON systems, open access networks, bandwidth dimensioning, and wireless backhaul. During the 2000s, Ed was a an R&D-facing and customer-facing Senior Product Line Manager for both DWDM and Broadband Access products. In the 1990s, as a systems engineering manager, Ed led R&D efforts in first generation APON/BPON and WDM PON technologies, while taking the lead role for Lucent in the FSAN standardization forum. Ed received the MS Mechanical Engineering and MS Electrical Engineering degrees from Columbia University, New York City.
Ed has been awarded four patents, has published over a dozen papers in technical conferences and journals, has authored the chapter on Optical Access Networks in the textbook Optical Fiber Telecommunications, and currently reviews submissions to IEEE on the subject of PON.
Jim Hjartarson, CEO, OneChip Photonics Inc.
Jim is a seasoned telecommunications industry veteran with more than 30 years of industry experience. Most recently, he was a co-founder and CEO of Catena Networks, later acquired by CIENA Corporation, where he was SVP of the Broadband Access Group. Previously, Jim was co-founder and VP of the Telecommunications Design Centre at Cadence Design Systems. Before then, he served as Director of Access Peripheral Design at Nortel Networks. In April 2010, Jim was named to the Board of Directors of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). Previously, Jim served two terms on the TIA's Board.
David Husak, CEO and Founder, Plexxi
David has been revolutionizing enterprise networks his entire career. Prior to Plexxi, Dave co-founded Reva Systems Corp. in 2003 and served as its Chief Technical Officer. He had previously founded C-Port Corp., where he was CTO. C-Port delivered the category-creating C-5 network processor in 1999. Prior to that, he was the founding engineer and system architect at Synernetics, the company that delivered the world’s first enterprise-scale switched-Ethernet systems. He stared his career at Apollo Computer. Dave has 13 patents covering a wide range of networking and communication engineering inventions, with several more pending. He holds a degree from MIT.
Robert Keys, Chief Technology Officer, BTI Systems
Dr. Robert Keys brings over 20 years of communications engineering and leadership experience to his role as Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining BTI Systems, Robert served as Chief Engineer for Bookham (now Oclaro), defining the company's technical roadmap and strategic investment requirements. Prior to Bookham, Robert held various influential roles in the development organization at Nortel, where he was responsible for the successful delivery of multiple optical products to market. Robert is a well-known authority in the optical industry, and is a frequently sought-after speaker. He has more than 12 patents granted in the area of optical communications. Robert has a Ph.D & M.Sc in Electronics and Electrical Engineering and a B.Sc in Physics from the University of Glasgow.
Bikash Koley, Principal Architect and Manager, Network Architecture, Google Inc.
Bikash Koley is the Principal Architect and manager of the Network Architecture team at Google. Bikash is responsible for scaling optimization and automation of the network layer of Google's cloud infrastructure. Bikash also oversees the network technology road-map at Google in order to support all the present and future Google services. Prior to Google, Bikash was the CTO of Qstreams Networks, a company he co-founded. He also spent several years at Ciena Corporation in various technical roles developing DWDM and Ethernet technologies.
Bikash is a frequent speaker in conferences and industry forums and is an active participant in various networking standard bodies.
Bikash has received 8 patents related to various optical and networking technologies. He received a BTech from IIT, India; and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland at College Park, all in Electrical Engineering.
Karen Liu, Principal Analyst, Components, Ovum
Karen Liu is responsible for market analysis of new telecoms technologies. Recent report topics include 40 Gbps/100 Gbps interfaces, silicon photonics and industry profitability. She also provides strategic advice, competitive analysis, market sizing, and industry structure analysis on a custom project basis. Prior projects ranged over a variety of hardware topics including ATCA platforms, tunable lasers, large matrix optical switches, plastic optica fibers, home networking, and IPTV solutions. She is a frequent industry speaker.
Prior to joining Ovum, Karen architected DWDM networking products at Tellabs and IBM. The experience gave her an appreciation for the interaction between enabling component technology and advances in networks and systems architecture.
Karen received a PhD in applied physics from Stanford University in the field of fiber optics, and a BSE in mechanical engineering from Princeton University.
Milo Medin,Vice President, Access Services, Google
Milo Medin has been part of the Internet development community for more than 25 years. He is currently the vice president of access services at Google, where he oversees the company’s Gigabit Fiber to the Home project and other efforts to improve access to the Internet.
Prior to joining Google in 2010, he was founder and CTO of M2Z Networks, a company that sought to deploy a national broadband wireless network system that will expand consumer network access by providing nationwide portable broadband service that was also to help bridge the digital divide.
He was co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of Excite@Home, where he led the
development of the company's national infrastructure, and helped deliver the first large scale residential broadband access service in partnership with major cable operators.
Earlier, Milo worked at NASA's Ames Research Center, where he managed the primary west coast interconnect for the Internet, and architected and managed the global NASA Science Internet. Before NASA, while enrolled at UC Berkeley, he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, programming high performance computers in support of various Defense Programs.
Milo holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from UC Berkeley. He has participated in a number of public policy forums, including two National Academy of Sciences panels and a variety of TechNet initiatives, and given testimony in Congress and before the Federal Communications Commission on Broadband technology policy. He has received two patents in the field of network access technology.
Jerry S. Rawls, Executive Chairman, Finisar
Jerry Rawls was elected Chairman of the Board in 2006. He has also served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors for Finisar Corporation from 1989 to 2008. From 1968 to 1989, he was employed by Raychem Corporation, a materials science and engineering company. At Raychem he held various management positions including Manager of Product Marketing, National Sales Manager, General Manager of the Aerospace Products Division, and General Manager of the Interconnection Systems Division. Rawls holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech University and an M.S. in Industrial Administration from the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma engineering honorary societies.
Jorge D. Salinger, Vice President, Access Network Architecture, Comcast Cable
As Vice President of Access Network Architecture at Comcast Cable, Jorge is responsible for the company’s video, high-speed data and voice access network strategy and architecture.
In this role, Mr. Salinger was the key inventor of CCAP, and led the creation of the CCAP architecture at Comcast, and the development of the CCAP specifications with a team of MSO peers and industry organizations. He was also the inventor and developer of the multi-dwelling MDTA, the QAM-to-QAM, the DMon probe, and the QAM-to-IP devices and specifications.
Mr. Salinger was recognized as the 2011 Person of the Year by CED and inducted into the Hall of Fame by CableFAX/Communications Technology.
Currently, Jorge is Comcast’s technical lead in the DOCSIS 3.1 and EPoC specifications, and is Comcast’s member of the DOCSIS Certification Board.
Jorge has over 20 years of experience in telecommunications and Cable, participating of new technology development and operations in areas of data, voice and video services.
Prior to Comcast, Mr. Salinger was President of Consulting at YAS Broadband Corporation where he served as Executive Consultant for many US and international MSOs assisting with technology strategies in all service areas. Jorge also directed the Broadband Access Certification programs at CableLabs, including DOCSIS, CableHome and PacketCable technologies.
Mr. Salinger was previously Director of Digital Services at Adelphia Cable, Director of Telecommunications at Florida International University and Vice President of Engineering at Systems Engineering Consultants, and participated in the launch of 4 start-up companies.
Jorge holds a Bachelor and a Master degree in Electrical Engineering from Florida State, has authored over 40 technical publications and papers, co-authored a book on micro-processor design, and is author and/or co-author of over 20 patents and applications.
David Ward, Chief Architect & CTO, Engineering, Cisco
As CTO and Chief Architect of Engineering at Cisco, David is responsible for defining strategy and leading research and development of new innovation via tight partnerships with customers and academia. He is known in the industry because of his knowledge and expertise in IP/MPLS routing, high availability, network design, and systems software. He is the Routing Area Director at the IETF and chair of four Working Groups: IS-IS, HIP, BFD and Softwires. Also, he is leading the work on defining a transport profile for MPLS at the ITU-T. He speaks frequently at the North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG), IETF, IEEE and RIPE conferences and collaborates with several university and private research groups, including Stanford, MIT, Cambridge and Tsinghua University.
David Welch, Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer, Infinera
David F. Welch co-founded Infinera, and served as CTO and CMO before his appointment as EVP and CSO in January 2010. He is currently serving a second term on the Board of Directors. Previously, he was CTO and VP Corporate Development at SDL. Dr. Welch holds over 130 patents, and has been awarded the Adolph Lomb Medal, Joseph Fraunhofer Award and the John Tyndall Award in recognition of his technical contributions to the optical industry. He is a Fellow of the OSA and the IEEE.
Dr. Welch holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.