Keynote Speakers

José Capmany: Optical FPGAs: principles and applications to optical networks and communications

Professor of Photonics at Universitat Poltècnica de València and Chief Operations Officer at iPronics, Programmable Photonics

José Capmany, COO is Professor of Photonics at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain and entrepreneur. With 30 years experience in photonic devices and systems research and technology transfer and over 500 scientific publications he is a Fellow of IEEE and OSA. In 2011 he co-founded VLC Photonics a leading design house in integrated photonics. In 2012 He received the King James I Award in Novel Technologies (the highest Scientific Distinction in Spain) for pioneering contributions in RF- Photonics. In 2016, he received a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant to develop programmable integrated photonic systems for RF-Photonic applications and in 2019 an ERC Proof of Concept Grant to bring the concept to market.

Jörg-Peter Elbers: Optical networks – The future is bright!

Senior Vice President Advanced Technology, Standards & IPR - ADVA

Jörg-Peter Elbers is responsible for technology strategy, applied research, standardization and intellectual property at ADVA. He has more than 20 years of experience in the optical networking industry. Prior to joining ADVA, Jörg held senior technical and leadership roles at Ericsson, Marconi and Siemens. He earned a Dipl-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from Technical University Dortmund, Germany. Jörg is member of the IEEE, heads the German VDE ITG expert committee on communications, and serves on the steering board of the European technology platform on networks. Jörg was technical and general co-chair of OFC 2017 and 2019, respectively, and is member of the European management committee of ECOC. He authored and co-authored more than 150 papers, 5 book chapters, and 20 patents.

Antonio Acín: Quantum cryptography: a new paradigm for secure information transmission

ICREA Professor at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences

Antonio Acín is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences. He has a degree in Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. He got his PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2001 from the UB. After a post-doctoral stay in Geneva, in the group of Prof. Gisin (GAP-Optique), he joined ICFO in 2003. At ICFO, Acín leads the Quantum Information Theory group. His research has been awarded with 4 grants from the European Research Council: 1 Starting, 1 Proof of Concept, 1 Consolidator and 1 Advanced Grant, the latter starting in 2020. He also received an AXA Chair in Quantum Information Science in 2016.