Ian White

Who is Ian White?

Professor Ian White FREng is Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University, van Eck Professor of Engineering, and Head of the Photonic Research Group, comprising CMMPE, Centre for Photonic Systems, and Photonics and Sensors, in the Engineering Department at the University of Cambridge.

Ian White was educated at the Belfast Royal Academy and he gained his BA and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge, in 1980 and 1984. He was then appointed a Research Fellow and Assistant Lecturer at the University of Cambridge before becoming Professor of Physics at the University of Bath in 1990. In 1996 he moved to the University of Bristol and became Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1998, before returning to the University of Cambridge in October 2001.

Ian White has built up a substantial research activity in the field of optoelectronics and optical communications and his team numbers approximately 45 people publishing on average 60 papers a year. In terms of research output, the group is one of the largest in the field of optoelectronic systems in the UK. Highlights of his research have included: the development of the first all-optical laser diode flip-flop, the first negative chirp electroabsorption modulator and the invention of a technique for transmitting radio frequency signals over long distances of multimode optical fibre. Several of these advances have already made commercial impact, the offset launch technique for enhancing the bandwidth of optical fibre links having already been adopted within Gigabit Ethernet standard.