image: Joseph with Robert Tkach, Chairman of the Young Scholar Committee and a Marconi Fellow. view more
Credit: University of Southampton
An engineering researcher from the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre was honoured this week at the prestigious Marconi Society Awards in San Diego, California.
PhD student Joseph Kakande, from Uganda, was selected as one of only three Marconi Young Scholars in this fourth year of the awards for his cutting-edge work in making communications even faster by using all-optical fibres. Marconi Society Chairman Emeritus Robert Lucky said that the scholars selection committee "looked for candidates who showed the potential to win the Marconi Prize – the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in communications science – at some point in the future. As a point of reference, Marconi Fellows have been at the forefront of every modern advance in telecommunications and the Internet."
Joseph's work focused on all-optical signal processing as the means of meeting the growth in demand for high-capacity optical communications. The current system of optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversion creates speed and power bottlenecks that cannot sustain the exponential growth in communications. "Electronics is really great for processing," Joseph explains, "but it can only work so fast."
Newer technology aims to replicate the functionality of electronic transistors, but uses optical components – flexible pure glass fibres roughly the size of a human hair that are capable of transferring information from one end to the other over longer distances. The advantage is speed: optical techniques easily process more than 10 billion bits a second – about 10 times faster than the fastest conventional computer.
Joseph's research aims to develop novel methods for processing high spectral efficiency phase encoded optical signals at ultra-high baud rates, using nonlinear fibre optic technologies. In essence, that means using light to control optical signals on ultra-fast time scales. His research is already published in several top journals including the Nature group, and has led to three patent filings, with more in the pipeline. Joseph would like to work for a large corporation in its research and development department. He says: "As a child, I had a fascination with electronics and I always wanted to work at Intel."
Named Best Student at National Level in Uganda, where he was a student at St Mary's College Kisubi, Joseph attained first-class honours in electronic engineering from the University of Hull, and is shortly to receive his PhD in optoelectronic engineering from the University of Southampton. His particular interest is in exploring how optical communications, which have revolutionised technology in the developed world, can be deployed in the Third World to empower its most deprived people. As his University co-supervisor, Optoelectronics Research Centre Deputy Director David Richardson says, "I think Joseph has all the capabilities to become a real research superstar."
The Young Scholar Awards include a financial reward and an invitation and travel funds to attend the annual Marconi Award Dinner.