PhD Student wins Best Student Paper award at ECOC 2015

PhD student Reza Sandoghchi has won the award for best student paper this year at the European Conference for Optics and Communications (ECOC), the largest conference on Optical Communications in Europe. He is celebrating by donating his prize money to charity.

Lead author on the winning paper, entitled, “High Dynamic Range Technique for Discrete and Distributed Scattering Loss Measurement in Microstructured Optical Fibres”, Reza presented the work of a team of ORC researchers into fibre characterisation: specifically the authors demonstrate a longitudinally resolved Optical Side Scattering Radiometry (OSSR) technique to measure discrete and distributed scattering loss with >60dB dynamic range and 5cm spatial resolution. The technique is validated on a standard single mode telecoms fibre before being applied to a record-length 11km hollow core photonic band-gap fibre (HC-PBGF), the characterisation requirements of which lie far beyond the capability of standard optical reflectometric instruments.

Reza says: “With the kind support of my supervisors and colleagues, we produced excellent work, which I, as lead author, was proud to present at ECOC. Winning this award is a great achievement for me personally, and our team: it is testimony to the quality of work we do here.

“I am giving the prize (€2000) to Comic Relief to help children in poverty afford an education. In some countries as little as £70 can provide education to a single child for one year. My biggest honour is that I could win this prize and donate the money to them.”

Dr Francesco Poletti added, "The best student award recognizes research excellence and presentation abilities. ECOC awards only one ‘best student prize’ each year, to the very best student in the whole conference. Reza's wonderful gesture makes this award seem even more deserved."

The paper will be published on http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ shortly.

Paper title: Ã¢â‚¬Å“High Dynamic Range Technique for Discrete and Distributed Scattering Loss Measurement in Microstructured Optical Fibres”

Authors: S. R. Sandoghchi, D. R. Gray, Y. Chen, N. V. Wheeler, T. Bradley, J. R. Hayes, E. R. Numkam Fokoua, G. T. Jasion, S. A. Mousavi, M. N. Petrovich, F. Poletti, D. J. Richardson Learn more about the Microstructured Optical Fibres group.

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