Congratulations to Mikael Mazur from Nokia Bell Labs. He has been selected as the recipient of this year’s IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, recognized, “For seminal contributions to fiber sensing using submarine fiber-optic networks and real-time multiple-input-multiple-output digital signal processing.”
Dr. Mikael Mazur is a Member of Technical Staff in the Advanced Photonics Research Department at Nokia Bell Labs, NJ. He received his PhD from the Photonics Laboratory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden (2019), where his dissertation on optical frequency combs pioneered new multi-wavelength signal processing schemes. Dr. Mazur’s current research lies at the intersection of high-capacity transmission and environmental sensing. He is spearheading the development of real-time signal processing for space-division multiplexing (SDM) and long-reach distributed fiber sensing methods. A key focus of his work is transforming trans-oceanic submarine cables into a global instrument for Earth and ocean science. By turning commercial networks into vast sensing arrays, he aims to close critical data gaps in our understanding of ocean dynamics and Earth’s interior structure, while simultaneously enabling real-time earthquake and tsunami early warning systems. An active leader in the photonics community, Dr. Mazur currently serves as the General Chair of the IEEE Photonics Summer Topicals 2026 and has served on Technical Program Committees for conferences including OFC, CLEO, and IPC. He is a member of IEEE, OPTICA, and the SSA. Outside the lab, he is a passionate scuba diver, a hobby that fuels his dedication to marine conservation and oceanographic research.
