MARIA ANA CATALUNA received the Physics Engineering degree from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal, in 2001. She has been committed to research in ultra-fast laser physics since her time as an undergraduate and worked as a research assistant from 2000 to 2003 in the Group of Lasers and Plasmas at IST. In 2003, she obtained a scholarship from the Portuguese Government (Foundation for Science and Technology) that enabled her to pursue her Ph.D. studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. In December 2007, she concluded her Ph.D. in Physics, where her research work focused on the ultrashort-pulse generation from quantum-dot semiconductor diode lasers.
Maria Ana has authored and co-authored over 30 peer reviewed journal publications and conference presentations, including a review paper in Nature Photonics and an invited contribution to the Encyclopaedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (second edition), on the subject of ultrafast lasers based on quantum-dot materials.
She also serves as an active reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and Applied Physics Letters.
Maria Ana is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Dundee, Scotland, where she is engaged in the investigation of innovative mode-locking regimes in quantum-dot lasers and also in the generation of mid-IR radiation using novel quasi phase-matched semiconductor crystals.

Gatare Gahangara Ignace received his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, Mons, Belgium, in 2004. Since 2004, he is working towards his Ph.D jointly at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium, and the CNRS Laboratoire des Matériaux Optiques, Photonique et Systèmes (LMOPS), a common laboratory between the Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité (Supélec) and the Université Paul Verlaine, Metz, France. His current research interests include experimental and theoretical investigations of polarization switching dynamics, injection-locking and chaos synchronization in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) subject to optical injection. He has authored about 8 research papers in international journals and contributed to about 20 international conferences. He served as reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.
He carried out (summer 2003) an internship in the research and development department of SEE Telecom, a Belgian telecom equipments provider. His activities involved technical test and specifications of the optical amplifier and the add-drop multiplexer modules for the MANSYS (Metropolitan Access Network System) project. After completion of his M.Sc degree, he received the Faculty Prize of “Best Master Thesis in Telecommunications” granted by SEE telecom (2004) and the Nick Forbat Prize awarded to the “Meritorious Student of the Year” (2004).
Currently, he is a student member of the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optic Society (LEOS) and of the Optical Society of America (OSA). “It was a great honor for me to receive the 2007 LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship which is, indeed, highly motivating.”

María García Larrodé was born in Zaragoza (Spain) in 1977. She received the M.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Centro Politécnico Superior, University of Zaragoza, in 2001, after having carried out her Masters thesis at Siemens AG in Munich (Germany) in 2000. Her Masters thesis dealt with enhanced-GPRS performance in GSM radio networks, study for which she carried out simulations, analysis and evaluation of EGPRS on link and system level.
From 2000 to 2004, she worked as a systems engineer in mobile radio access networks at
Siemens AG Germany, focusing on system analysis and design for the base station subsystem of GSM and GPRS networks, radio resource management and signaling, performance evaluation of GSM/GPRS/EDGE and UMTS networks, and conformance assessment of mobile devices. She also contributed to standardization activities and to patent applications on channel allocation strategies for radio communication systems.
In March 2004, María joined the COBRA Research Institute at the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) where she has conducted research work toward the Ph.D. degree in the area of broadband wireless access networks employing radio over fiber techniques. Her Ph.D. work has been defined within the framework of a Dutch national IOPGenCom project and has also delivered contributions to other international projects like IST-Nefertiti, IST-MUSE and IST-ISIS. She has published the main results of this work in 7 IEEE/IEE/OSA journal articles and 10 international conference papers. In addition, she has contributed to over 18 papers as a co-author. She has also acted as a peer-reviewer for IEE Procedings in Optoelectronics and IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology.
María's work has been recognized with the KIvI Niria Telecommunication Prize 2006, to the best Ph.D. research work in the field of Telecommunications in a Dutch University, awarded by the Royal Institute of Engineers and supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economics Affairs, and with the IEEE LEOS – Graduate Student Fellowship Award 2007, awarded by the IEEE Lasers & Electro-Optics Society to outstanding LEOS student members.

Zhensheng Jia received the B.E. and M.S.E degree in Physical Electronics and Optoelectronics from the Electronic Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Gee-Kung Chang in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
During 2002–2004, Jia worked as a Research Engineer on transport and access networks in the Optical System and Network Lab, China Telecom Beijing Research Institute (CTBRI), Beijing. He spent two summer internships in the field of chirp-controlled direct modulated transmitter and optical equalizers for metro optical links at NEC Laboratories, America in 2006 and 2007. His research interests include optical millimeter-wave signal generation, transmission and processing for symmetric optical-wireless access networks, high-speed TDM/WDM PON, ultra-high data rate (>=100 Gb/s) optical transmission systems, and nonlinear optical signal processing. He has been author or co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers. He also serves as an active reviewer for IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IET Optoelectronics, and Optics Communications. He was one of the recipients of the 2007 IEEE/LEOS Graduate Students Fellowship.
“It is a great honor to receive the 2007 LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship Award! This recognition will encourage me to work harder and continue my Ph.D. research and future career in this field. Additionally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to IEEE/LEOS for being supportive to students!”

Hannah Joyce received her B.E. (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and B.Sc. (Pharmacology) degrees from the University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, in 2004. She is currently working towards her Ph.D. with the Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Nanotechnology Group at The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Her project aims to develop III-V semiconductor nanowires and nanowire heterostructures for applications in optoelectronic devices. “I feel honoured and I am very grateful to receive an IEEE-LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship - 2007. I wish to give my heartfelt thanks to my supervisors Prof. C. Jagadish and Dr. H. H. Tan, and to my coworkers and collaborators, for their great support, guidance and mentoring throughout my Ph.D. studies.”

Yannick Keith Lize obtained the BSc in Applied Physics from Concordia University in Montreal in 2001 and the M.Sc. in Physics from École Polytechnique in 2004 under the supervision of Prof. Suzanne Lacroix, Prof. Nicolas Godbout and Dr Christian Malouin. He is soon to defend his thesis on optical differential phase shift keying generation, transmission and demodulation from École Polytechnique de Montreal under Prof. Nicolas Godbout with a co-supervision from Prof. Alan E. Willner at the University of Southern California.
During his Ph.D. work, Yannick has done internships at the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) in Sydney, Australia under Prof. Benjamin J. Eggleton working on silica nanostructured nanowires, at the Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN) in Melbourne, Australia under Prof. Rod Tucker and Thas Nirmalathas working on PMD emulation, at Alcatel/Lucent Bell Labs Crawford Hill, NJ, under Dr Randy Giles and Dr Xiang Liu on DPSK optical packet encoding, and at the University of Southern California under Prof. Alan E. Willner on DPSK demodulation and optical error correction.
Besides being a recipient of the IEEE LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship in 2007, he has also received the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations (CIPI) student exchange grant in 2004, 2005 and 2006, the SPIE Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering in 2005 and 2006, the OSA/Milton Chang student travel grant in 2005 and 2006, the 2003 and 2005 Student Presenter award of the Canadian Association of Physicists, the 2004 New Focus student travel grant and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada eMPOWR research bursary in 2004. He has 20 peer-reviewed publications to his credit as well as 40 international conference papers including 2 invited papers, and 5 patents.
Yannick is currently director of R&D for advanced modulation format devices at ITF Laboratories in Montreal leading the development efforts on next generation DPSK, DQPSK and coherent demodulation devices. He is a member of the IEEE LEOS, IEEE ComSoc, OSA and SPIE. Yannick is a member of the OSA Membership and Education Services (MES) and the technical program committee of the IEEE 7th International Conference on Optical Communications and Networks (ICOCN 2008).
“I want to thank the IEEE LEOS for awarding me one of the 2007 Graduate Student Fellowships. It is a tremendous honor and I sincerely thank all my friends and collaborators but especially my PhD supervisors, Prof. Nicolas Godbout at École Polytechnique de Montreal and Alan E. Willner at the University of Southern California.”

Cicero Martelli was born in Curitibanos (SC, Brazil) and holds BEE and MSc degrees from the Federal University of Technology-Parana. In February 2008 he will submit his PhD thesis in photonics on the work he carried out at the Interdisciplinary Photonics Laboratories within University of Sydney’s School of Chemistry and Optical Fibre Technology Centre. During his career Cicero has been an exchange student at the University of Applied Sciences – Berlin and a visiting researcher at the University of Aarhus. In March 2008 he will join the Laboratory of Fiber Optic Sensors within the newly established Centre of Sensors Technology for the Petroleum Industry and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at PUC-Rio as an assistant professor. Cicero has co-authored over 70 journal and conference papers and is a reviewer for the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters and Semina. His research interest includes optical communications, diffractive structures, optical sensors, waveguides, porphyrins and surface science.
In 2007 he was awarded an IEEE LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship and for this the following people/institutions should be thanked:
• IEEE LEOS for promoting this important award and acknowledging student achievements;
• Prof. John Canning, PhD supervisor, for his guidance, support and tireless and timeless assistance;
• CAPES-Brazil for a full student scholarship and ARC-Australia for general research support during the PhD project;
• Prof. Maxwell J. Crossley, Prof. Martin Kristensen and Dr. Mattias Aslund for support and assistance to develop some of ideas behind the PhD project.

Houxun Miao received the B. S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and the M. S. degree in Optical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2002 and 2004, respectively. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Andrew M. Weiner at Purdue University.
His research focuses on polarization mode dispersion (PMD) compensation in optical fiber transmissions and ultralow-power optical pulse measurements. He proposed and experimentally demonstrated the concept of all-order PMD compensation via wavelength parallel Jones matrix characterization and correction. He demonstrated polarization insensitive ultralow-power second-harmonic generation frequency-resolved optical gating by using an aperiodically poled lithium niobate (A-PPLN) waveguide as the nonlinear medium. Currently, he is working on single-shot single-frame characterization of arbitrarily shaped optical waveforms.
He received the Andrews Fellowship from Purdue University (2004-2006). He is one of the recipients of the 2007 IEEE/LEOS Graduate Student Fellowships.

JORIS VAN CAMPENHOUT was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1979. He received the M.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics in 2002, from Ghent University, Belgium. Since October 2002, he has been working towards a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, at the Photonics Research Group at the same University. His research interests include the design and fabrication of on-chip optical networks, based on silicon-on-insulator and the heterogeneous integration with indiumphosphide through bonding technology. For his Ph.D. work, his focus is on the development of an electrically driven silicon-integrated microdisk laser. He has been author or co-author of over 10 peer-reviewed journal papers. Joris Van Campenhout acknowledges the support from the Research Foundation – Flanders, Belgium for a doctoral grant.

Dirk van den Borne was born in Bladel, The Netherlands, on October 7, 1979. He received his M.Sc. degree in Electric Engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 2004.
During his Master studies he has done research at Fuijtsu laboratories Ltd. in Kawasaki, Japan and the Siemens AG in Munich. Currently, he is working towards a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology in collaboration with Nokia Siemens Networks (before Siemens AG) in Munich. He focuses on improvements in long-haul transmission systems using robust modulation formats, alternative dispersion compensation schemes and electronic impairment mitigation. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and conference contributions of which 10 where invited contributions. In addition he wrote 5 patents related to fiber-optic communications. In 2007 he received the KIVI-NIRIA Telecommunication Award and the IEEE/LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship.
“It is a great honor to receive the IEEE/LEOS Graduate Student Fellowship. This recognition for my Ph.D. work is a strong encouragement to further pursue a career in the fiber-optic communication industry. I would like to thank my colleagues at the Eindhoven University of Technology and Nokia-Siemens networks for the support and significant contributions to my research. As well, I would like to thank LEOS for their active support of student members, which can truly make a difference in opening up career opportunities.”

Lin Zhu received a B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2000 and 2002, respectively. He also received the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, in 2004. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Amnon Yariv, and Prof. Axel Scherer at Caltech.
His research interests include semiconductor lasers, periodic photonic structures, optical resonators and hybrid integration of optical systems with microfluidic systems. His recent project focus on using two dimensional photonic crystal Bragg structures to control the spectral and spatial mode of large-area semiconductor lasers. He has been author or co-author of more than 30 refereed journal articles and conference papers. He also serves as an active reviewer for IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Optics Communications, Optics Letters, and Optics Express.

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