The award was presented at the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in San Diego by Rene-Jean Essiambre, President of the IEEE Photonics Society.  The IEEE Photonics Award is one of the IEEE technical field awards and is a highly prestigious award of the IEEE Photonics Society.

Roel Baets has made profound contributions to the field of silicon photonics. He identified the significance of silicon photonics as an emerging technology early on, then made the critical connection to industry and large-scale manufacturing through his association with IMEC, demonstrating the first silicon photonic circuits on the basis of CMOS technology in 2005. This was a major leap in the commercial viability and industrial relevance of silicon photonics. Indeed, his contributions to the field of integrated photonics have enabled the entire value chain. Silicon photonics is now experiencing great commercial success and Baets has been a fundamental contributor to that success. A growing number of semiconductor foundries today offer silicon photonics as a standard process and many established and new companies are developing and selling commercial products based on the technologies and device concepts that Baets contributed to. Roel Baets is also the chair of ePIXfab, the European Silicon Photonics Alliance.

Baets is a Fellow of IEEE, EOS and Optica and a senior full professor at Ghent University, Belgium. He is also affiliated with IMEC, a world-leading R&D and innovation hub in nanoelectronics, photonics and digital technologies.

IEEE Photonics Award

The IEEE Photonics Award was established in 2002. Photonics is defined as the science and technology of generating and harnessing light and other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. It is awarded for, but not limited to: light-generation, transmission, deflection, amplification and detection and the optical/electro-optical componentry and instrumentation used to accomplish these functions. Also included are storage technologies utilizing photonics to read or write data and optical display technologies. It also extends from energy generation/propagation, communications, information processing, storage and display, biomedical and medical uses of light and measurement applications. Recipient selection is administered through the Technical Field Awards Council of the IEEE Awards Board. In the evaluation process, the following criteria are considered: outstanding discovery, significant scientific or technological advancement, important invention, impact on field, and the quality of the nomination.

IEEE

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