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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.

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