Robert Tkach completed his undergraduate education at the University of Cincinnati and his graduate education at Cornell University. He joined Bell Labs in 1984, where he worked with Andrew Chraplyvy. In 1996, he moved to AT&T Labs where he stayed only four years before joining Celion Networks in 2000. Later, in 2006, he rejoined Bell Labs where he is now Director of Advanced Photonics Research.

He is a Fellow of OSA, IEEE, and AT&T and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2008, he received OSA/IEEE’s John Tyndall Award “for pioneering breakthroughs in high-capacity transmission systems and networks, including the invention of NZDF (non-zero dispersion fiber) and dispersion management of optical fiber nonlinearities.”