Alan Willner is LEOS’ President-Elect, and he has been involved with many different aspects of LEOS over the past 15 years. But first, some of Alan’s background.
Alan was raised in New York and Baltimore, and he attended undergraduate school at Yeshiva University in New York. His goal was to become a patent lawyer, and he pursued a master’s degree at Columbia University’s Engineering School with the sole purpose of this career goal. However, when his advisor, Prof. Richard Osgood, asked if he wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in engineering instead of heading to law school, Alan jumped at this great opportunity. His thesis dealt with laser-assisted etching of semiconductors.
After graduating from Columbia, Alan’s career took another twist. By blind luck, he was offered a research post-doc position from Ivan Kaminow at AT&T Bell Labs in optical fiber communication systems to do something called “WDM” (wavelength-division-multiplexing), which he knew nothing about. A plethora of pioneers and luminaries were to be found in a little building at Crawford Hill, and he was a proverbial “kid in a candy store,” learning as much as he could. As we now know, WDM was about to explode as being a key driving force behind the dramatic increase in information transmission capacity over a fiber. Whereas Ivan had published a 90-Mbit/s WDM system before hiring Alan, WDM can now provide >10 Tbit/s aggregate capacity. What a party it has been!
After working as a researcher at Bellcore and again learning from many outstanding people, Alan fulfilled his dream of becoming an academic by joining the University of Southern California in 1992. USC has been a very welcoming place to him, and he loves guiding the research of aspiring bright young engineers as well as teaching classes filled with eager learners. His entrepreneurial spirit took hold during the late 90’s, during which time he started a company (Phaethon Communications) as well as consulted for several start-up companies and venture capital firms.
Inspired by Tingye Li of AT&T Bell Labs, one thing Alan realized as a youngster was his passion for becoming involved in the professional community. He finds working with colleagues and volunteering for societies to be an extremely enjoyable and fulfilling part of his career. From the moment that Andy Chraplyvy of Bell Labs asked him to join his first LEOS committee, Alan has tried to be helpful to the community. Alan has been an Editor-in-Chief of two LEOS journals, Chaired several LEOS-sponsored conferences, and been a LEOS Distinguished Traveling Lecturer. He feels that there is a wonderful collegial spirit among the volunteers and that the LEOS staff members are always extremely helpful and friendly. Alan also cherishes his other activities over the years with the Optical Society of America (OSA), of which 40% of LEOS members belong.
Of course, a key highlight was when Gary Eden graciously tapped Alan to be his replacement as LEOS’ V.P. for Technical Affairs in 1996. Since Technical Affairs touches almost every aspect of LEOS, Alan became deeply involved with governance and inter-disciplinary projects. He also learned one key lesson: LEOS is incredibly helpful in making a volunteer’s efforts pay off, as long as the volunteer personally champions and “run with” a specific meaningful project.
As LEOS President-Elect, Alan has been attempting to formulate a strategy that will make an impact when he becomes President, and he has a good mentor in Scott Hinton, LEOS’ President. Some compelling issues Alan is pondering include: (i) how to increase membership retention by articulating relevant reasons for being a member in our web-based era, (ii) how to accelerate the globalization of our activities to match our anticipated growth, and (iii) how to effectively nurture local and student chapter activities.
Without question, Alan is able to pursue all of his professional activities due to the patience and understanding of his wonderful wife, Michelle. They have four darling sons, Moshe, Asher, Ari, and Jacob. (As an aside, even Alan’s graduate students tend overwhelmingly to have boy babies!) His mother lives in Baltimore, as did Alan’s father until his recent passing. In fact, Alan credits his father for being his lifelong, insightful guide in each step of his professional development.
Alan looks forward to serving LEOS and interacting with as many members as possible during his tenure as President-Elect and then as President. We all share a common desire to help our colleagues within LEOS, and Alan will welcome suggestions on ways to improve our society.