 Anabel Alarcón
Exfo
Anabel Alarcón is a technology and product management professional specializing in high-speed networking and telecommunications. Her expertise includes Ethernet technologies from 100G, 400G, 800G to 1.6T, network validation, traffic generation, optical networking, and next-generation data center technologies. She combines deep technical knowledge with product strategy and market insight to drive innovation and customer success. Anabel is also passionate about mentorship and supporting women the growth within the technology community.
Mohammad Alavirad
Senior Principal Research Architect, Dell Technologies
Mohammad Alavirad is a Senior Principal Research Architect in the Office of the CTO at Dell Technologies, where he leads initiatives in optical networking, Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), Near-Packaged Optics (NPO), and advanced AI infrastructure. With a PhD in Electrical Engineering specializing in Photonics, he possesses over a decade of experience in optical communications and photonic component design. His professional journey includes tenures as a senior optical engineer at Ciena and as an optical design engineer at Viavi Solutions and Ranovus. Throughout his career, he has focused on DWDM technology, high-speed transceiver design, and high-speed photonic component design and developments. An active delegate in industry standards bodies such as OIF, IOWN, IEEE and now OCP, he has contributed extensively to high-speed communication research and next-generation data fabrics. His current work focuses on optical interconnect technologies for scale-up and scale-out next-generation AI fabrics, as well as photonic technologies for optical computing
Fabio Cavaliere Ericsson
Fabio Cavaliere is Expert in Photonic Systems and Technologies at Ericsson, and Rapporteur of ITU-T Question 6/15 (Characteristics of optical components, subsystems and systems for optical transport networks). In 28 years of professional experience, his research activity encompassed radio access networks, fiber access, high speed optical transmission and integrated photonics. Fabio is author of about 130 filed patent applications and 120 scientific publications on optical networks, including the book “Photonics applications for radio systems and Networks (Artech House, Boston). He was guest editor of the book “New Trends in Optical Networks” (Applied Sciences), Applied Science’s Topical Collection on Optical Networks, IEEE Communications Standards Magazine and IEEE Journal of Optical Communications and Networking (JOCN). Fabio was member of the technical program committees of international conferences on optical communications, like ECOC, the Board of Stakeholders of Photonics 21 (the European technology platform on photonic technologies), the Expert Advisory Board of NetworldEurope and in the in High Level Steering Committee and the Strategic Advisory Board of the European Quantum Flagship.
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Amjad Haddad
Lumentum
Amjad Haddad has been active in the telecommunications industry since 2007, beginning his career at Nortel Networks. Following the acquisition of Nortel, he transitioned to Ciena and later served as a Product Marketing Manager at FONEX, a leading supplier of telecom equipment. Since joining Lumentum, Amjad has worked in the Modules Business Unit and is currently part of the Switching Business Unit, where he manages Lumentum’s WSS portfolio. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University and an MBA from Carleton University.
 José García
Chief Technology Officer, Axonal Networks
José García Echeverría is Chief Technology Officer at Axonal Networks, where he helps drive the development of photonic technologies for next-generation communication and computing systems. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from McGill University, where his research focused on optical computing and silicon photonics. His work spans photonic integrated circuits, microring-based optical processing, and optical logic architectures. Prior to joining Axonal Networks, he held technical positions at STMicroelectronics and Future Electronics, working across semiconductor technologies, MEMS sensors, and optoelectronic systems.
 Glenn Parsons Ericsson Canada
Glenn Parsons is an internationally known expert in mobile transport and Ethernet technology. He is a principal standards advisor with Ericsson Canada, where he coordinates standards strategy and policy for Ericsson, including network architecture for 5G radio transport networks. Previously, he has held positions in development, product management and standards architecture in the ICT industry. Over the past number of years, he has held several management and editor positions in various standards activities including IETF, IEEE, and ITU-T. He is currently involved with 5G transport standardization in IEEE and ITU-T and is the chair of ITU-T SG15 as well as the working group chair of IEEE 802.1. In addition, he is a member of the IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors, and the chair of the Public Policy Committee for IEEE Canada. He graduated in 1992 with a B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
 David V. Plant
McGill University
David V. Plant is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He researches photonic systems. He is a Fellow of several learned societies, including Optica, IEEE, and the Royal Society of Canada
 Matthew Posner
IEEE Photonics Society
Matthew Posner applies his technical and business skills to advancing photonics technologies. His professional interests are photonics integrated circuits, education pedagogy, and “getting science out of the lab.” As a Senior Member of IEEE and Chair of the IEEE Photonics Society Chapter Montreal, he supports outreach education, career development, and technical networking. As Director of Technology and Business Development at Axonal Networks Inc., Matt manages public & private partnerships to build an ecosystem for next-generation computing and connectivity.
 Piotr Roztocki
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder, Ki3 Photonics Technologies
Piotr Roztocki's work is focused on the development of quantum photonic technologies compatible with standard telecommunications infrastructures. He obtained his PhD from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS-EMT) in Varennes, Canada, developing platforms for on-chip entangled light generation and network stabilization. In 2015, Dr. Roztocki co-founded Ki3 Photonics Technologies, where he currently serves as Chief Technology Officer. Ki3 specializes in creating scalable hardware and software modules for quantum photonic networks, designed to seamlessly integrate with standard telecom. Dr. Roztocki is the first Canadian winner of the Paul Baran Young Scholar Award (the world's most innovative young engineers in the field of information technology).
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Christine Tremblay
Professor, École de technologie supérieure
Christine Tremblay is a Full Professor at École de technologie supérieure, where she also directs the Master’s Program in Electrical Engineering. She is the Founding Researcher and Head of the Network Technology Lab, a cutting-edge optical network testbed integrating a wide range of fiber-optic transmission technologies, as well as advanced test, modeling, and control systems supporting speeds up to 1600G. Her team pioneered filterless optical networking, an innovative and disruptive architectural approach using coherent transceivers with digital signal processing and passive broadcast-and-select interconnections between network nodes. She previously held research and senior leadership roles at INO, EXFO, Roctest, and Nortel. Her current research focuses on AI and machine learning for optical networks, advanced fiber sensing, and hybrid classical-quantum communication systems. Since 2009, she has been a Co-Instructor for three OFC hands-on short courses (SC528, SC314, and SC210), delivering practical training on fiber-optic network testing and polarization characterization techniques.
 Jun Shan WeyVerizonJun Shan Wey is an Associate Fellow in Technology Standards Planning at Verizon. Her work focuses on optical networking standards ecosystem development. Along with serving as the ITU-T SG15 Q2 Associate Rapporteur, WP1 Coordinator and editor of G.681 Recommendation, she has held multiple OFC leadership roles as past Program and General Chair, and the current Steering Committee Chair. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is a Fellow of OPTICA.
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