Emmanuel Desurvire is Director of the Physics Research Group at Thales Research and Technology, and has held previous positions at Stanford University, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbia University and Alcatel. With over 25 years' experience in the field of optical communications, he has received numerous recognitions for his scientific contributions, including the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Engineering, the 2005 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, and, in 2007, the IEEE/LEOS John Tyndall Award, Engineer of the Year Award and the France-Telecom Prize of the Academie des Sciences.