Stuart Barnes was born in Worksop, Notts. He was educated at Retford Grammar School and Queen Mary College, Univ. of London, where he received a BSc Eng, with honours and a PhD. After this he joined STL and worked on the last generation of analogue systems (TAT 7 and ANZCAM) and the first generation of Optical Systems (UKBel5 and TAT8). After that he became Technical Manager of STC Cable, Technical Manager STC Submarine Cable and finally Technical Director STC Submarine Systems. After 2 years in Paris with Alcatel Research he returned to the UK where he founded Ilitron, then Azea, after a period with Atlas Venture as an Entrepreneur in Residence. Azea merged with Xtera Inc. in 2007 and after a decade he led an MBO of Xtera, where he is currently Chairman.
Steve received his PhD in electron-optical systems at Imperial College, London in 1992 and has over 30 years’ experience in the submarine systems industry. While at Northern Telecom, he co-wrote “Monty”, the first bespoke configurable Monte-Carlo fibre optic system simulator to quantify the performance of arbitrary length systems limited by optical amplifier noise, fibre nonlinearities and polarization effects. Subsequently, whilst with Alcatel Submarine Networks, he led the team which developed the more advanced OCEAN simulator, and contributed to the understanding of soliton transmission. Whilst at ASN he was also responsible for assessing system reliability. Later, whilst at UCL, he developed DSP techniques for coherent transmission and worked on the optimization of Forward Error Correction (FEC) for PM-QPSK systems. In 2015, he developed the theory of maximising the transmission capacity of long haul submarine systems subject to cable and joint voltage constraints. More recently, Steve was the VP of R&D at Focus sensors where he worked on advancing the theory and practical implementation of the Indus Distributed Acoustic Sensor. He is author or co-author of 13 patents and 26 publications.
With 30 years’ involvement in the submarine telecoms industry, Kevin has extensive experience of overcoming the challenges presented to engineers developing products for subsea optical fibre networks. Currently Mechanical Engineering Manager at Xtera, he has been responsible for the mechanical design of their innovative subsea repeater and branching unit, developing them from concept to seabed. Previously, he spent 10 years at Alcatel where he worked on the first WDM optical repeaters, transmission equipment and system assembly. Kevin is a Chartered Engineer and holds an honours degree in Manufacturing Engineering and Management from Loughborough University.
Rob has spent 40 years working on Subsea Cables and has first hand experience of the challenges of laying underwater communications cables. As Head of Subsea Engineering at British Telecom Research Labs he led the development of the installation technology which enabled fibre optic cables to be deployed at sea. He was Technical Director of the company which laid the first international fibre optic cable from the UK to Belgium followed by the UK section of first trans-Atlantic fibre crossing. Until his retirement he was a consulting engineer working on unusual subsea cable problems for example the reuse of cable systems and exceptionally deep repairs (one at 9200m water depth).
Senior Commercial Technology Associate at Corning with global responsibility for long-haul terrestrial and submarine fiber product strategy. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCL and an Executive MBA from Warwick Business School. He has authored >50 peer-reviewed papers on optical fiber communication and is a regular presenter at major industry events.
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