Nominators must complete a nominee submission by August 10th with the following:
The John Tyndall Award is presented annually to a single individual who has made outstanding contributions in any area of optical-fiber technology, including optical fibers themselves, the optical components used in fiber systems, as well as transmission systems and networks using fibers. The contributions which the award recognizes should have met the test of time and should have been of proven benefit to science, technology, or society.
Jointly sponsored by the IEEE Photonics Society and Optica, the award is endowed by Corning Inc.
Presented to: An Individual
Scope: to recognize outstanding contributions in any area of optical-fiber technology, including optical fibers themselves, the optical components used in fiber systems, as well as transmission systems and networks using fibers.
Prize: A specially commissioned Steuben crystal sculpture, a scroll, and an honorarium.
Basis for Judging: In the evaluation process, the following criteria are considered: the contributions which the award recognizes should have met the test of time and should have been of proven benefit to science, technology, or society. The contributions may be experimental or theoretical.
We are proud to recognize and celebrate honorees of the John Tyndall Award. First established in 1987 to honor the memory of John Tyndall who made distinguished contributions to physics, particularly his demonstration of total internal reflection in a continuous stream of water, our honorees as a group set the standard for pioneering or continuing contributions to fiber optics technology.
For pioneering and seminal contributions to large capacity long-haul optical communication systems including integrated light sources, dispersion-managed soliton, WDM submarine cable systems, and spatial multiplexing.
Professor Masatoshi Suzuki received B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electronics from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, in 1979, 1981 and 1984, respectively. He joined KDD (currently KDDI), Tokyo, Japan, in 1984. He was promoted to R&D Fellow of KDDI Corporation in 2007, Executive Vice President of KDDI R&D Laboratories, Inc. in 2011, and President of KDDI Foundation in 2018. Currently he is the Vice President and professor of Chitose Institute of Science and Technology and the visiting professor of Waseda University.
During his career in KDDI, Suzuki has made seminal contributions to the sustained progress of long-haul high-capacity optical communication systems by his pioneering and innovative research from optical devices, systems and networks.
Key results included the first demonstration of the semiconductor integrated circuit, EML (Electroabosorption Modulator integrated Laser), required for high-speed optical communications, and the invention of dispersion managed soliton which enabled high-speed long-haul optical transmission. He demonstrated the first high-speed low-chirp EA modulators and EMLs in 1985 and 1987, respectively. The EML was the first semiconductor optical IC realized after 29 years from the first electronic IC. His pioneering research has led to the current worldwide deployment of EMLs.
In 1995, Suzuki proposed and demonstrated the dispersion managed solitons, which was newly founded physical phenomenon of stable pulse propagation over nonlinear fiber enabling high-speed long-haul optical communication, e.g. 40Gbit/s over 10,000km transmission. The dispersion managed soliton is a soliton-like chirped Gaussian pulse and a periodically stationary solution of nonlinear Schrödinger equation of general dispersion managed nonlinear fibers. With the technology, he and the international team of ATT-SSI (later TE-SubCom) and KDDI groups succeeded in the first demonstration of 10 Gbit/s based WDM transmission over 10,000km in 1998. It was extended to 1Tbit/s over transoceanic transmission with advanced dispersion managed fibers in 1999. These technologies have been applied to most of commercial Tera bit/s class transpacific and transatlantic submarine cables including Japan-US and TAT-14 as well as Asian regional submarine cable systems. As a result, a 200-fold increase in capacity for transoceanic submarine cable systems, underpinning the global Internet and the telecommunications infrastructure and supporting its growth, was realized within 10-years.
Suzuki co-founded the EXAT Initiative focusing on spatial multiplexing in 2008 to promote new research field to overcome the coming transmission capacity limit of conventional single-core fibers. Suzuki and his team have led the world’s first demonstrations of the transoceanic multicore fiber transmission with exceeding 1 Exa bit/s-km capacity-distance product in 2013 and the highest fiber capacity of over 10 Pbit/s in 2017.
Besides these works, Suzuki has demonstrated outstanding achievements in the field of terrestrial optical networks, such as nation-wide all optical networks based on GMPLS-controlled optical cross connects, high-capacity WDM PON and over 10Tbit/s high-capacity radio over fiber for beyond 5G mobile networks. His current research interest includes high-speed free-space communications for non-terrestrial networks using high power PCSELs and Silicon photonics for optical computing.
Through these works, Suzuki has co-authored 5 books and more than 420 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and produced 120 registered International Patents. He has received various awards for his research over the years, including the Best Paper Awards from OEC1988, IEICE1996 and OECC2000, Achievement Award, Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award and three IEICE Milestone Awards from IEICE, Minister Awards from MEXT and METI in Japan, Kenjiro Sakurai Memorial Prize, Hisoka Maejima Award, Medal with purple ribbon from Emperor in Japan in 2017, Ichimura Prize in industry in 2018, Telecom System Technical Award in 2021, and C&C Prize in 2024. He was an elected member of Bord of Governors of IEEE Photonics Society and the Auditor of IEICE. He is currently a chairman of Photonic Internet Forum. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow, Emeritus of Optica and a Fellow and Honorary member of IEICE.
| Year | Award Winner | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | David Richardson | For pioneering contributions to the development of optical fibers and their applications and commercialization in fiber lasers and optical communications. |
| 2023 | Ming-Jun Li | For seminal contributions to advances in optical fiber technology. |
| 2022 | Meint Smit | For leadership in building a photonic integration ecosystem, and pioneering contributions to key photonic devices including the arrayed waveguide grating. |
| 2021 | Michal Lipson | In recognition of her fundamental and technological advances in integrated photonic devices. |
| 2020 | Roel Baets | For seminal research in silicon photonics and for driving the foundry model in this field. |
| 2019 | Kim Roberts | For pioneering contributions to the development of practical coherent communication systems. |
| 2018 | Peter J. Winzer | For contributions to understanding and advancing the capacity of coherent optical communication systems including advanced modulation formats and spatial multiplexing. |
| 2017 | E.M. Dianov | For pioneering leadership in optical fiber development and outstanding contributions to nonlinear fiber optics and optical fiber amplifiers. |
| 2016 | Alan H. Gnauck | For sustained pioneering research contributions that drove commercialization of high-speed, high capacity lightwave communication systems. |
| 2015 | Paul Daniel Dapkus | For pioneering and sustained contributions to the development of metal organic chemical vapor deposition and high performance quantum well semiconductor lasers.” |
| 2014 | Kazuro Kikuchi | For pioneering contributions to the fundamental understanding of coherent detection techniques. |
| 2013 | James J. Coleman | For contributions to semiconductor lasers and photonic materials, processing and device designs, including high reliability strained-layer lasers. |
| 2012 | John Bowers | For pioneering research in hybrid-silicon lasers and photonic integrated circuits. |
| 2011 | David F. Welch | For seminal contributions to photonic ICs and semiconductor lasers developed in fiber optic communication systems around the world. |
| 2010 | C. Randy Giles | For seminal contributions to advanced lightwave communications networks including erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, fiber Bragg grating-based subsystems, amd MEMS crossconnects. |
| 2009 | Joe C. Campbell | For seminal contributions to the understanding,design and telecommunication systems implementation of avalanche photodiodes |
| 2008 | Robert W. Tkach | 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. |
| 2007 | Emmanuel Desurvire | For pioneering contributions to the physical and theoretical understanding of Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and to their early development. |
| 2006 | Donald Scifres | For seminal contributions to semiconductor laser diode technology that power the optical fiber networks and as an entrepreneur in creating one of the premier companies that bring to practice the semiconductor diode laser technology to serve the fiber optics industry. |
| 2005 | Roger H. Stolen | For fundamental contributions to the understanding of optical fiber nonlinearities, including the identification and understanding of simulated Raman scattering in fibers. |
| 2004 | Larry Coldren | For contributions to semiconductor laser diode technology, including widely tunable DBR lasers and vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. |
| 2003 | Andrew Chraplyvy | For pioneering research on optical fiber nonlinearities and their dispersion management, and leading wavelength-division-multiplexed fiber transmission systems beyond Terabit/second capacities. |
| 2002 | Neal Bergano | For outstanding technical contributions to and technical leadership in the advancement of global undersea fiber optic communication systems. |
| 2001 | Tatsuo Izawa | For contributions to vapor-phase axial deposition for optical-fiber fabrication and pioneer work of silica-based lightwave circuits. |
| 2000 | Stewart Personick | For pioneering research in optical receiver design, system engineering, and optical time domain reflectometry, and for leadership in education and the promotion of fiber optics. |
| 1999 | John MacChesney | For the invention and development of the MCVD process which is one of the major techniques for the manufacture of low loss optical fibers and for high purity overcladding tubes using sol-gel techniques. |
| 1998 | Kenichi Iga | For pioneering contributions in the development of surface emitting lasers and planar microlens arrays for parallel optoelectronics. |
| 1997 | Ivan Kaminow | For contributions to lightwave device technology involving high-speed modulation, integrated optics, semiconductor lasers, polarization effects in fiber, and WDM components, and to optical FDM networks. |
| 1996 | Kenneth Hill | For discovery of photosensitivity in optical fibers and its application to Bragg gratings used in device applications in optical communications and sensor systems. |
| 1995 | Tingye Li | For sustained advances in high-capacity optical fiber communication systems created by his pioneering research, leadership, and personal contributions over more than two decades. |
| 1994 | Elias Snitzer | For pioneering contributions to optical propagation in fiber and to rare-earth-doped lasers and amplifiers. |
| 1993 | Yasuharu Suematsu | For contributions to wide-band optical fiber communication through his proposed dynamic single-mode lasers and semiconductor-based integrated optics. |
| 1992 | Dr. Donald B. Keck | For the invention and development of methods for manufacture and measurement of devices for optical communication, including low attenuation fibers |
| 1991 | David N. Payne | For outstanding contributions to the design, measurement and fabrication of optical fibers and active fiber devices. |
| 1990 | Thomas Giallorenzi | For significant technical, management, and professional contributions to the development and applications of fiber optics and optical fiber sensor technology. |
| 1989 | Stewart Miller | For his foresight, dedication, technical contributions and pioneering leadership in building the broad foundations for today’s fiber-optic telecommunications systems. |
| 1988 | Michael Barnoski | In recognition of his invention of devices and instruments fundamental to fiber optic technology, and the leadership that he has exerted both in professional societies and in industry in advancing optical communication technology. |
| 1987 | Robert Maurer | In recognition of his contributions to the discovery and understanding of materials and techniques for the fabrication of glass fiber waveguides for optical communication. |
© Copyright 2025 IEEE – All rights reserved. A public charity, IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.