April 15: Wayne H. Knox
"Bits, Bytes and Monster Terabits"
Abstract
The more you click your mouse, the more we optics people love it.
Download as many files as you want! Really big ones, too! Those great
big data packets will clog up the data network, and companies will have
to buy lots more equipment. Did you ever wonder how computers talk to
eachother ? I will show you how bits and bytes are created, transported
and detected and how these are used to communicate all around the
planet. I will also show you how we can send a monster terabit of
information down a single optical fiber the size of a single hair on
your head. This is a trillion bits per second, or 1,000,000,000,000 bits
per second, equal to the entire internet traffic on the planet.
Reading List
"How the internet works", by Preston Gralla, isbn 0-7897-2132-5
"Journet to cubeville", by Scott Adams isbn 0-8362-7175-0
Biography
Wayne H. Knox was born in Rochester, NY in 1957. He received the BS and
PhD degrees at the University of Rochester, Institute of Optics. In 1984
he joined Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ as a post-doctoral member of
technical staff, was appointed Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
in 1990, and in 1997 was appointed Head of the Advanced Photonics
Research Department in Holmdel. He is a fellow of the Americal Physical
Society and the Optical Society of America, and in 1990 won the National
Academy of Sciences award for Initiatives in Research. He was LEOS
Distinguished Lecturer for 1997-1998. In 1999, he won the Richtmyer
Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers. His research
interests include ultrafast communications systems, fundamentals and
applications of ultrafast technology and nonlinear optics, and optics
education. His hobbies are music (guitar, lute, bass, flute, piano),
skating, rollerblading, skiing, woodworking and alternative energy
systems.