Technologist and entrepreneur Dr Simon Poole has been awarded the TelSoc 2016 CharlesTodd Medal for his “outstanding” contributions to the world’s optical fibre infrastructure.
The medal is awarded annually by TelSoc for outstanding contributions to telecommunications and is the most prestigious award made by the Australian telecommunications industry to any of its members.
Professor Peter Gerrand, Chair of the TelSoc Selection Panel, said Dr Poole is a technologist and entrepreneur “who has made outstanding contributions to the world’s optical fibre infrastructure”.
“It can be truly said that Simon Poole’s research and commercial innovations have been crucial in making long-distance optical fibre infrastructure possible today: particularly his work on optical amplifiers, Bragg gratings and optical switching,” Peter Gerrand said.
{loadposition peter}Dr Poole obtained his PhD from Southampton University in 1987 and was a key member of the team that invented the Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifier (EDFA) during his postgraduate work.
The EDFA avoids the need for electrical regeneration in optical communication links. Since the late-1990s, this has been the key enabler for the deployment of low cost, long span optical communications systems, both above land and beneath the oceans, around the world.
TelSoc says that without the optical amplifier, “it is hard to imagine how our world’s telecommunication infrastructure and the Internet could have become so extensively interconnected and with such very high bandwidths as they use today”.
Gerrand says that in 1988, Dr Poole moved to Australia and became joint founder of the Optical Fibre Technology Centre at the University of Sydney, which subsequently became part of the Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre. He was director of the CRC’s Sydney node from 1991 to 1995 and oversaw the creation of “considerable human capital, intellectual expertise and an entrepreneurial spirit in optical technology – with long lasting impact for Australia”.
“Dr Poole has created and led two very successful start-ups in Australia: Indx in 1995 and Engana in year 2001. These have grown into companies playing a leading role in the manufacture and export of key components of the global optical fibre network, and have generated in aggregate more than $900 million in revenue to date,” TelSoc notes.
“These are just a few of Simon’s extraordinary achievements, Gerrand says.
“You can see that he has made a substantial contribution to this country and to the world in the development and commercialisation of new technologies that underpin both the high performance and the low cost of our global communications network.
“He has contributed substantially to solving the ‘tyranny of distance’ problem for Australia, which parallels the pioneering work and interests of Sir Charles Todd.”