About the Speaker

Kasia Balakier is a Space Segment Engineer in the Telecommunications and Integrated Applications Directorate at the European Space Agency (ESA). She is a Technical Officer on multiple projects implementing photonics technology for satellite communication. Prior to that, she was a Lecturer in Photonics at University College London (UCL). In addition to her academic career, she was a Senior System Engineer and Expert in Telecom Payload Photonics at Airbus Defence and Space, where she worked on developing and implementing photonics systems for telecommunication and Earth observation satellites.

Kasia received her PhD in photonics from UCL. She was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Fellowship to support her research in integrated microwave photonics for space. Prior to joining UCL, she worked as an Optical Engineer at SENER Ingeniería y Sistemas in Spain and an R&D Engineer at LG Electronics in Poland and South Korea.

About the Speaker

Professor Polina Bayvel is the Head of the Optical Networks Group at UCL, which she founded in 1994. Her research focuses on optical communications and networks, including intelligent optical networks, wavelength routing, high-speed transmission and fiber nonlinearity mitigation.

After completing her PhD, she worked as a systems engineer at STC Submarine Systems (now Alcatel) and Nortel, specializing in optical transmission and network planning. In 1994, she received a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and established the first academic systems engineering group in optical networks at UCL.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, IEEE, and Optica, she was awarded a CBE in 2017 for services to engineering. She is the first woman to receive the Thomas Young Medal (2021) and the Royal Society Rumford Medal (2023). In 2024, she was honored with the Humboldt Research Prize.

Bayvel has authored over 500 journal and conference papers, led the EPSRC Programme Grant UNLOC (2012-2018) and currently leads the EPSRC Programme Grant TRANSNET (2018-2024), which aims to revolutionize optical networks using machine learning and intelligent transceivers. She advocates for secure, low-delay, high-capacity communications infrastructure to support the digital economy and transformative technologies.

About the Speaker

Jean-Jacques Greffet is an alumnus of Ecole Normale de Paris-Saclay. He received his PhD in solid-state physics in 1988 from Université Paris-Sud, working in light scattering by rough surfaces. Between 1994 and 2005, he worked on the theory of image formation in near-field optics. Since 1998, he made a number of seminal contributions to the field of thermal radiation at the nanoscale, including the demonstration of coherent thermal sources and the giant radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale due to surface phonon polaritons. Since 2000, he has contributed to the field of quantum plasmonics and light emission with nanoantennas and metasurfaces. He is an OSA fellow and the recipient of the Ixcore Foundation prize and the Servant prize of the French Academy of Science.

Photonic Integrated Circuit Scaling Pathways

This talk will share recent DARPA program investments for increasing the size and complexity of photonic integrated circuits. It will also discuss the challenges and opportunities the creation of these circuits present. The needed ecosystem advancements to increase access to and further mature photonic integrated circuit technology will also be covered.

About the Speaker

Dr. Anna Tauke-Pedretti is a program manager in DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office. Her research interests include compound semiconductor devices, optoelectronics, microelectronics manufacturing and heterogeneously integrated microsystems. She was a manager and technical staff member at Sandia National Laboratories from 2008 to 2022.  At Sandia, she managed and led research efforts in photonic integrated circuits, high-power microelectronics, focal plane arrays and microelectronics security. Tauke-Pedretti has co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications and conference proceedings and holds 14 patents. She received Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Iowa, as well as Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara.