Dr. David DiGiovanni
As President of OFS Laboratories in Somerset, N.J., Dr. David DiGiovanni heads a world-class center of excellence for optical innovation. He is also, in a sense, the “guardian of the flame” of one of the most storied research centers in the world. OFS Laboratories grew from the Bell Laboratories, originally established by Alexander Graham Bell.
“I have the world's best job, which is to work with a team of top researchers on interesting and challenging problems. If successful, our solutions create new business opportunities and lead technology in new directions,” says Dr. DiGiovanni.
The pace of technological advances is constantly accelerating. “Absolutely. This has been documented in many ways with perhaps the best known being Moore's law of the periodic doubling of computer processor speed. Since the pace of technology is accelerating, we often underestimate what can be achieved in the long term.”
According to Dr. DiGiovanni, the work at OFS Laboratories is totally customer focused. “The biggest challenge is getting our achievements out the door and into the marketplace,” he says. “To be most effective, we need a 'perfect storm' of an innovative research program, a visionary customer who can see and exploit the potential, and a marketing team who understands and appreciates both sides.”
In addition to managing OFS Laboratories, Dr. DiGiovanni is actively involved in research on various phenomena related to optical fiber design and fabrication, and has made notable contributions to erbium-doped optical fiber for amplifiers, high power amplifiers and lasers, Raman amplification and optical components. He is the author or co-author of numerous scientific papers, and is a regular speaker and lecturer at industry conferences and symposia.
Dr. DiGiovanni received several engineering and mathematics degrees from Brown University , including a PhD in 1987. He was recently presented as a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, which cited his “extensive contributions and leadership in the fabrication and application of fiber amplifiers and lasers.”
Lasers continue to be the focus of Dr. DiGiovanni’s research. “OFS is pushing hard to develop new types of fiber lasers and amplifiers and is actively partnering with visionary companies to develop new applications enabled by these devices. The field of optical sensing is also growing quite rapidly, with the niche of harsh environments served particularly well by robust optical fibers. By combining materials and photonic expertise, OFS is well-positioned to lead this development,” he says.
