Our sister title, Electro Optics, has revealed its Photonics100 list of photonics innovators for 2025, and many of the honourees are from the fibre systems and optical communications fields.
Mark Elliott, the Chief Operating Officer of Europa Science, which publishes both Electro Optics and Fibre Systems, said: "The Photonics100 celebrates the people that drive the photonics industry forward – the innovators, the boundary-pushers, the disruptors, the out-of-the-box thinkers and the R&D ‘rock stars’. This chance to celebrate the often unsung heroes at the cutting edge of our industry – Chief Technical Officers, Heads of R&D, Senior Engineers, research leaders, entrepreneurs and others – has transformed our content. Thank you for your enthusiasm, energy and infectious interest in making our third year certainly our best!"
This year's list features such names as:
- Prince Anandarajah, Associate Professor and Director of Photonics Systems and Sensing Lab (PSSL), Dublin City University
- Seb Savory, Professor of Optical Fibre Communication, University of Cambridge
- George Zervas, Professor of Optical Networked Systems, University College London
- Jonas Geyer, Director of Engineering (DSP), Acacia Communications (now part of Cisco)
The Photonics100 asked for nominations operating in any of these four categories:
- Photonics vendors – suppliers and integrators of photonics components and systems, such as optics, lasers, sensors, test and measurement, optoelectronics, illumination and imaging.
- Original Equipment Manufacturers using photonics – integrators using photonics as an enabling technology in vertical markets such as life sciences, defence, automotive, aerospace, mechanical engineering, electronics, semiconductors and optical communications.
- Start-ups – companies under five years old, operating as either a photonics vendor or an OEM (as defined above).
- Academia/research – either those involved in photonics research itself or those using photonic technology to further research in a non-photonics field, such as physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, engineering and more.
Elliott said: "This year, nominations came from a wide range of countries and the sheer volume of entrants was very welcome. As you would expect, there was some heated debate, but little compromise… This is a hard-fought list to make and, so, congratulations are duly in order for this year’s honorees. We are proud to be able to help celebrate your inspiring work.
"We hope it creates a compelling snapshot of the widely recognised and the less familiar. Nominations have come from colleagues and customers, long-distance admirers and confidantes.
"We expect some debate on this list and the many other topics we create content about, so join the discussion on our social channels at LinkedIn and on X @electrooptics. Thank you to everyone for your support in our third year and congratulations to all 100 of you who have made our list."
The print edition of the 2025 list will be available at the end of November.
