Congratulations to Roel Baets from the Ghent University-IMEC, Ghent, Belgium. Roel has been selected as the recipient of this year’s IEEE Photonics Award, “For pioneering research in integrated photonics, including silicon, silicon-nitride, III-V devices, and their heterogeneous integration”.
Roel Baets, an IEEE Fellow, has made profound contributions to the field of silicon photonics. He identified the significance of silicon photonics as an emerging technology early on, then made the critical connection to industry and large-scale manufacturing through his association with IMEC, demonstrating the first silicon photonic circuits on the basis of CMOS technology in 2005. This was a major leap in the commercial viability and industrial relevance of silicon photonics. Indeed, his contributions to the field of integrated photonics have enabled the entire value chain. Silicon photonics is now experiencing great commercial success and Baets has been a fundamental contributor to that success. A growing number of semiconductor foundries today offer silicon photonics as a standard process and many established and new companies are developing and selling commercial products based on the technologies and device concepts that Baets contribute to.
The award will be presented at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) in March.
