Committee Members
Chapter Chair
Richard Pitwon is the Managing Director of Resolute Photonics specialising in optical and photonic integration at system, board and chip level.
He is a Senior member of the IEEE, Fellow of the IET (FIET) and Chartered Engineer (CEng) with over 17 years’ experience in advanced photonic interconnect, system architecture and integration. He holds 51 patents and has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications including journals, conference proceedings, book chapters and international standards and given over 60 talks and guest lectures at international conferences and universities.
He is the Chair of the IEC international standards subcommittee on fibre optic interconnecting devices and passive components (SC86B) as well as the secretary of IEC optical circuit boards standards group and principal UK expert on international standards groups (IEC/BSI) for optical interconnect, photonic integrated circuits and electronic assembly.
Vice Chair
Aytun Erdentug is the currently the Director of Branscan. In 1993, he set up Branscan Limited as a subsidiary and division of Parascan. In 1994, he carried out management buyout of Parascan and Branscan.
By 1998, Parascan had grown into US 10 Million turnover employing 70 people and had attracted venture capital injection of US 4 Million by July 2000.
Aytun Erdentug left Parascan through a management buyout of Branscan from Parascan in June 2001. From 1993 to 2002, Branscan served solely the milling and baking industry, however, Aytun Erdentug has been expanding the technology and the application base of Branscan to include the major industrial activities such as starch, dairy, chemical, sugar and paper industries.
Branscan is now represented in over 40 countries and is currently at the front line of the digital imaging technology application in the industry for monitoring and on line measurement applications.
Chapter Treasurer/Committee Member
Filipe Ferreira received his PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal in 2014 for his work on high capacity optical transmission systems based on mode division multiplexing.
He previously worked for the Optical Networks Research & Technology division of Coriant (former Nokia Siemens Networks) as a Research Engineer. During that period, he led activities in the EU-FP7 research project MODEGAP, including few-mode fibres nonlinear modelling and profile design, advanced optical links design and simulation.
He is now a Research Fellow at Aston University leading the development of new cost-reduced approaches to high capacity optical networks under the EU-FP7 research project INSPACE.
Recently, he was awarded a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to carry out research on space division multiplexing at Aston University.
Outreach Officer/Committee Member
Akhil Kallepalli is a research associate in the Optics Group, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow. His primary focus is on developing novel imaging and wavefront measuring systems. Additionally, his interests also include remotely sensing biophysical and medically relevant ‘markers’ using lasers and imaging systems.
He obtained his B. Tech. (Geoinformatics Engineering) degree from Andhra University (2012) and MSc (Geo-information Science and Earth Observation) degree through a joint program of Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, India and ITC, University of Twente, The Netherlands (2014). The research experience acquired through these degrees includes coastal sea level rise monitoring and advanced hyperspectral image processing. His current research interests include multi-modal medical imaging systems, biomedical applications of lasers and hyperspectral image processing.
Mr Kallepalli is also an active member of the IoP, SPIE and is actively participating in the research community through participation in science fairs and reviewing journal articles. He is the point of contact and organiser of the HOPES Webinar Series. In addition to his role with the Chapter, managing the Chapter’s online presence, he also serves as the Publicity and Public Relations Chair for BICOP Conference series.
Secretary/Committee Member
Lee Crudgington is currently the Awards and Contests coordinator in the Region 8 Student Activities Committee in addition to being Chair of student activities and chapters co-ordinator in the UK and Ireland Section. Lee also serves as Secretary of the IEEE Photonics Society in the UK and Ireland, alongside serving as content lead within the IEEEmadC team.
Lee is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Southampton, having completed his PhD in photovoltaic technologies in 2015. Prior to this, Lee completed a masters degree in microelectronic systems design after working as a digital hardware engineer in the communications sector.
Media and Public Relations Officer/Committee Member
Anastasiia Vasylchenkova is currently a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow in Optical Networks Group at University College London, running a research project on the analytical modelling of ultrawideband optical communication. She received her BSc and MSc in nuclear physics from Kharkiv National University, Ukraine in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
She received a PhD degree from Aston University, Birmingham, UK, for her research for the nonlinear Fourier transform approach for optical communications. Her research interests include fibre optics, nonlinearity mitigation, analytical modelling and transmission system design.
Anastasiia is an experienced educator in STEM, educational events manager and designer, Fellow of the Higher Educational Academy. She is holding the role of the President of the International Physicists’ Tournament, acting also as a juror and organiser. Beyond this, she has 10 years of volunteering experience for STEM and photonics communities, including engagement through SPIE, IEEE, and Optica.
Conferences and Meetings Coordinator/Committee Member
Greta De Paoli is a PhD student in the Silicon Photonics Group of the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics at the University of Southampton. She previously studied at the University of Padova (Italy) where she obtained both her BSc and MSc in Telecommunications Engineering with a focus in Photonics. Her research interests include plasmonic modulators based on transparent conductive oxides and the study of the properties of silicon nitride as a platform for integrated photonics
IEEE BICOP Conference Volunteers
Our chapter is a successful collaboration of volunteers from different backgrounds, contributing to the overall success of the activities. One of our key activities is the IEEE British and Irish Conference on Optics and Photonics. We are grateful for all the assistance from our volunteers.
![CWang[7602]](https://r8.ieee.org/ukie-pho/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2019/08/cwang7602-e1565953367377.jpg)
Chao Wang is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, where he joined as a Lecturer in 2013. From 2011 to 2012, he was a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA. He received the Ph.D degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 2011.
His research interests include microwave photonics, optical communications, optical sensing and imaging. He has received research funding from EU Marie-Curie Actions, EPSRC, the Royal Society and Catapult. He was the recipient of SPIE Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering (2008), Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2009), Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad (2009), IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship (2009), IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society Graduate Fellowship (2010), NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011), and EU Marie Curie Career Integration Award (2014).
He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Fellow of Higher Education Academy (HEA). He has been a regular reviewer for major photonic journals of OSA, IEEE, Nature and IET, and for research grants of ERC, EPSRC, and British Council.
Moises A. Jezzini is a researcher in the photonics packaging and integration group at Tyndall National Institute. He is interested in photonics product development where he believes photonics packaging is a key element. He is especially interested in developing novel high-speed photonics packaging solutions. Moises has also industrial experience in photonics manufacturing as a test engineer and as a new product introduction engineer. From his industrial experience, he has managed yield improvements and manufacturing product introductions for five different products including a 40/100G PM-QPSK Rx and a 10/40G Tx. From his academic background, he holds a BSc in Physics Engineering and an MSc in Electronic Systems, both from Tec de Monterrey. And he holds a PhD degree from University College Cork, with his thesis titled “Microwave design of interposers for photonic integrated circuits”. Moises is also a proactive outreach volunteer to promote STEM and Photonics (SPIE, IEEE, OSA). He currently manages the work packages for three EU funded research projects: OCTChip, MORPHIC and PICTURE; as well as other industry R&D projects.
Past Committee Members
We will forever be grateful for services rendered by our past committee members and the impact they have had on the Chapter’s growth. This section features their experiences …
Dr Kin Kee Chow a Senior Member of IEEE Photonics Society, a Member of IET, a Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK, and an Associate Editor of IEEE Access.
In his time with the Chapter, he assisted in the organisation of the inaugural IEEE BICOP (2018) conference and served as its Program Chair and managed the paper submissions, reviews and decisions.
At the time of this thank you note, he is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.