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Seeing the world in a brilliant light
Travel allows fibre optics researcher
to bring home new knowledge
A bright young doctoral student has studied with world's
leading scientists in Australia, the United States
and Mexico. The payoff? He has acquired a broad base of expertise
for use in Canadian technology.
Yannick Keith Lizé specializes in the field of fibre
optics, which operates at the core of communications technology
and networks.
But it is another kind of network – the human kind
– that has given him personal access to expertise far
beyond the laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montréal
where he is a doctoral student in the engineering physics.
Mr. Lizé has travelled to Australia, the United States
and Mexico, advancing his knowledge in the photonics and fibre
optics field as a result of travel grants from the Canadian
Institute for Photonic Innovations (CIPI). As a CIPI student
researcher, he has trained with many of the world's
photonics giants.
In 2004, the CIPI awarded Mr. Lizé travel grants
to visit the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne
in Australia to work with renowned photonics experts Drs. Ben
Eggleton and Rod Tucker, studying silica nanowires and optical
signals generation. Mr. Lizé says working with
those Australian experts has given him a great deal of knowledge
that he is putting to use in Canada.
This year, he received support from the CIPI to do research
at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, one of the most famous
research laboratories in the world. There, under the supervision
of optical network pioneer Dr. C. Randy Giles, he worked
for four months on optical signal generation projects, investigating
novel ways to encode data and reduce the cost of building
or upgrading an optical network.
"Now I know experts in different universities across
the world that I can contact to discuss new ideas or brainstorm
about a specific problem. You can't know everything about
everything in any field, especially science, and having access
to world experts that will help you out is definitely an advantage.
This network (CIPI) has definitely supported me in that way."
Mr. Lizé is currently supervised by Canadian photonics
expert Dr. Raman Kashyap and previously collaborated
with CIPI investigators Drs. Suzanne Lacroix and Nicolas
Godbout. His PhD project involves polarization mode dispersion,
a detrimental effect that happens to optical fibres when they
transmit over long distances.
"Because this specific type of dispersion of light is
not stable, it is difficult to tell how much dispersion will
be there at the end of the transmission distance," he
says. "For example, if fibres are placed beside train
tracks, there can be a negative impact when the train runs
by and we have to be able to understand and mitigate this
impact." He has built an emulator that can reproduce
this effect in the lab and has come up with different strategies
to mitigate the dispersion.
Mr. Lizé's knowledge base, built with the CIPI's
assistance, also has allowed him to present his research results
at numerous conferences, nationally and internationally.
Honoured for his research by the International Society for
Optical Engineering (SPIE), who awarded him the 2005 SPIE
Educational Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering,
he is a two-time recipient of the student presenter award
from the Canadian Association of Physicists and was also given
a student travel grant by the Optical Society of America to
present his work at its annual meeting. His ideas in signal
generation, optical error correction and dispersion emulation
have produced three patents, and he's hoping Canadian
companies will be able to take advantage of his technology
in the near future.
Mr. Lizé is also a founding member of the CIPI student
network, serving as its president for the past two years and
getting involved in the CIPI workshops and summer schools.
He applies what he has learned through his international,
multiple-supervisor fellowships when he interacts with other
students at CIPI events.
"Networking with other student researchers is a key
aspect of the student networks. We are all the leaders of
tomorrow in this field. We have lots in common and many things
to learn from each other."
At the summer schools, Mr. Lizé says students meet
with other students, university professors and industry experts
to participate in highly focused discussions on innovative
research and the latest trends in photonics. Normally, a stewardship
or fellowship enables students to train with one supervisor.
However with the NCE program, students can learn from many
supervisors, with a variety of expertise and in different
lab settings.
www.cipi.ulaval.ca
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