Other places Randy has worked include: Lasertron Incorporated, Bedford, MA (April 1997 - May 2002) as Staff Engineer. Lasertron's main goal was to make semiconductor lasers and receivers for optical communications. Randy had worked on High Power 980nm chips, fiber Bragg-grating-stabilized (BGS) pump lasers, 1480nm-band pump lasers, and Electroabsorption modulated lasers (EMLs).
The BGS pump product was developed to achieve high power and wavelength stability over a wide range of powers (see Laser Focus World, Nov. 1999). The product completed qualification during 1999 and had gained wide acceptance within the telecom industry. It had generated beyond $15M in revenue the first year after entering production.
In January 2000, Lasertron (including its parent Oak Industries) was taken over by Corning Incorporated. Our location was then called Corning Lasertron. Corning had huge demand for pump lasers since it was the largest single supplier of erbium fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). That changed around 2001-2002 and Corning reduced its interest in optical components. That provided an opportune time to move on to Infinera. Randy is currently a Senior Member of IEEE and a Life Member of OSA. Randy has also consulted for opto-electronic companies.
Randy's main interests include: semiconductor lasers (both high power and high speed), quantum noise, dispersion compensation, filtering, polarization, electronic components, and methods of integrating these elements.
Prior to Lasertron, Randy was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UCSB. He was involved in projects for 1) an integrated wavelength monitor for sampled-grating, distributed-Bragg-reflector (SGDBR) lasers -- These are broadly wavelength tunable semiconductor lasers that can lase at any one of about thirty distinct wavelengths in the optical spectrum and 2) a photon number amplifier -- This is a device that amplifies light and gives quantum noise performance which is superior to standard optical amplifiers. The advantage is due to the fact that unlike standard travelling wave amplifiers, which always give a Poisson statistical distribution in the number of output photons, for a known number of input photons, the ideal photon number amplifier will give exactly N times as many output photons (no more, no less). Thus, it is a deterministic amplifier and adds less noise. Plus, it can serve as a wavelength converter.
Randy grew up in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, USA.
Randy has one brother and one sister. Here is a picture of his family , showing (from left to right) his oldest nephew (Shawn), mother, father, Randy, brother (Brian), sister (Janine), and youngest nephew (Eric).
Randy graduated from Riverside High School and later attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he received his B.S. in electrical engineering. Here's evidence that Randy made a lot of noise while he was at Michigan. He then went to Caltech in Pasadena, CA where he got his M.S.E.E. and studied under Prof. Amnon Yariv . There he completed a Ph.D. on "Ultrashort and Ultrahigh-Repetition-Rate Pulse Generation through Passive Modelocking" involving experiments for generating sub-picosecond pulses of light, demonstrating lasers which turn off and on ~100 billion times per second, and determining the ultimate theoretical limitations of such devices. Randy demonstrated the first chip-only picosecond pulsed laser which could produce produce up-chirped, un-chirped, and down-chirped pulses by tuning a voltage. An up-chirped pulse is one in which the frequency rises during the pulse. Most people are familar with chirp as small birds usually make an up-chirped sound "tweet" while large birds tend to make a down-chirped sound "cawww". The laser pulses just do it in ~1 trillionth of a second.
On July 4, 1998, Randy married Christina Alvarez (now Christina Salvatore). This was probably Randy's best decision yet. We have a girl (Ashley) who is 4 years old and a boy (Grant) who is 5 months old.
Reg Lee, a grad student studying Vertical Cavity Semiconductor Lasers (VCSELs) and helpful in setting up my first home page.
Dan Provenzano, a grad student studying low-noise semiconductor lasers.
Matt McAdams, a grad student studying high-speed modulation of semiconductor lasers.
A picture of me with John Kitching in Las Vegas, taken by Xu. Dr. John is now working at NIST in Boulder, CO.
After being a postdoc at UCSB for 13 months, Randy had concluded that Santa Barbara is geographically on of the ideal spots in the U.S. Here's a picture of Santa Barbara. With the calm ocean, the peaceful mountains, the awesome weather, and the beautiful city, one finds it hard to wish for more. Now I visit when I get the chance. With an enormous number of trails in the area, mountain biking is among the best anywhere. A mountain bike link to the bike club with which I was riding.
Last updated March 19, 2009
