Amr S. Helmy is an Assistant Professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. Prior to his academic career, he held a position at Agilent Technologies Photonic Devices, R&D division, in the UK between 2000 and 2004. At Agilent his responsibilities included developing distributed feedback lasers, monolithically integrated lasers, modulators and amplifiers in InP-based semiconductors. He also developed high-powered submarine-class 980 nm InGaAs pump lasers. He received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. from the University of Glasgow with a focus on Photonic Fabrication Technologies, in 1999 and 1994 respectively. He received his B.Sc. from Cairo University in 1993, in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering.
For his Graduate studies, Amr has been awarded the Francis Morrison Award form the University of Glasgow. In 2007 he was awarded an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research and Innovation in Ontario-Canada for his leading work on nonlinear frequency conversion in III_V semiconductors. His research interests include photonic device physics and characterization techniques, with emphasis on nonlinear optics in III-V semiconductors; applied optical spectroscopy in III-V optoelectronic devices and materials; III-V fabrication and monolithic integration techniques.
Amr is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the Optical Society of America. He has served as the Chair of the Nano-technology Sub-committee in the IEEE Communications Society since 2005, as the Associate Editor - Canada for the IEEE Laser and Electro-Optics Society Newsletter since 2006 and is currently the Chair of the Optical Materials and Processing Sub-committee for the same society.
As the VP membership Amr aims to overhaul membership benefits within LEOS and realign the society to better serve the current and emerging needs of its members from academia, industry and otherwise.

Alwyn Seeds was born in Amersham, near London, England in 1955. He read Electronics at Chelsea College (now part of King’s College), University of London and received the BSc degree with First Class Honours in 1976. He moved to University College London (UCL) to carry out research on the optical control of avalanche diode oscillators, receiving the PhD degree for this work in 1980. From 1980 to 1983 he was a Staff Member at Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on GaAs monolithic millimetre-wave integrated circuits for use in phased-array radar. He returned to England in 1983, to take up a lectureship in telecommunications at Queen Mary College, University of London, moving to UCL in 1986, where he is now Professor of Opto-electronics and Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He has published over 250 papers (more than 60 of them invited) on microwave and opto-electronic devices and their systems applications and filed 10 patents in this area. He was awarded the DSc degree of the University of London in 2002 for his research in microwave photonics. His current research interests include THz photonics, tuneable semiconductor lasers, quantum confined optical modulators, optical control of microwave devices, mode-locked lasers, optical phase-lock loops, optical frequency synthesis, broadband wireless over fibre access systems, uncooled dense WDM technologies and non-linear processing in optical transmission.
Alwyn Seeds has been a Program Committee member for the LEOS Annual Meeting since 2002 and was Sub-committee Chair for Microwave Photonics for 2007, he was a Program Committee member for the 2006 IEEE LEOS/MTT International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP) and is an Advisory Committee member for the IEEE/IEICE Asia-Pacific Microwave Photonics Meetings. He served as Program Chair for the 2006 IEEE LEOS/EDS Indium Phosphide and Related Materials Conference, as Co-Chair for the 2005 LEOS Summer Topical Meetings, as editor of Special Issues in Microwave Photonics for the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology and IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, as Program Chair, General Chair and Steering Committee Chair for the IEEE LEOS/MTT MWP meeting series, as Special Session and Workshop Organiser for the IEEE/OSA OFC conference, as a Short Course Presenter for both ECOC and OFC and as a committee member of the UKRI LEOS/MTT/APS Joint Chapter.
In addition to his LEOS activities Alwyn Seeds has served as Chairman of the Photonics Professional Network of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK), is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, an IEEE Fellow and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Engineers. He is a co-founder of Zinwave Inc., a manufacturer of wireless over fibre systems, and a director of or consultant to a number of other companies.
Outside work Alwyn Seeds is interested in music, particularly opera and church music, audio technology and the cultural and social pleasures of living in central London with his wife, Angela and teenage daughter, Caroline.
As Vice-President for Technical Affairs Alwyn Seeds hopes to contribute to growing LEOS activity in emerging areas of photonics working with the other VPs and the LEOS Technical Committees.