ORC Student Wins Marconi Award

A talented engineering researcher from the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton, has
been honoured at the prestigious Marconi Society Awards in San Diego, California.

PhD student Joseph Kakande, from Uganda, was selected as one of only three Marconi Young Scholars in this fourth year of the awards for his work in making communications even faster by using all-optical fibres.

Marconi Society Chairman Emeritus Robert Lucky said that the scholars selection committee ‘looked for candidates who showed the potential to win the Marconi Prize – the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in communications science – at some point in the future.

“As a point of reference, Marconi Fellows have been at the forefront of every modern advance in telecommunications and the Internet.”

Joseph’s research aims to develop novel methods for processing high spectral efficiency phase encoded optical signals at ultra-high baud rates, using nonlinear fibre optic technologies. In essence, that means using light to control optical signals on ultra-fast time scales.

His research is already published and has led to three patent filings, with more in the pipeline. Named Best Student at National Level in Uganda, where he was a student at St Mary’s College Kisubi, Joseph attained first-class honours in electronic engineering from the University of Hull, and is shortly to receive his PhD in optoelectronic engineering from the University of Southampton.

His particular interest is in exploring how optical communications, which have revolutionised technology in the
developed world, can be deployed in the Third World to empower its most deprived people.