Graham T Reed

Graham Reed is Professor of Silicon Photonics and Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton, UK.  He graduated in Electronic and Electrical Engineering with first class honours in 1983, and with a PhD in Integrated Photonics in 1987. In April 2012, he and his group joined Southampton from the University of Surrey, where he was Professor of Optoelectronics, and was Chair of the Department of Electronic Engineering from 2006 to 2012.

Reed is a one of the earliest pioneers of the field of silicon photonics acknowledged and established the Silicon Photonics Research Group at the University of Surrey in 1989. The group is now approximately 75 people, have stayed at the forefront of the field for more than 35 years, have provided a series of world leading results since its inception, and are particularly well known for their work on silicon optical modulators. For example, the group produced the first published design of an optical modulator with a bandwidth exceeding 1 GHz, proposed the pre-emphasis method of driving silicon modulators, and were the first to publish the design of a depletion mode optical modulator, which is now the industry standard device. In 2011 the team were responsible for the first all-silicon optical modulator operating at 40Gb/s with a high extinction ratio (10dB), as well as a second modulator design (also operating at 40Gb/s) that operates close to polarization independence.  They also reported the first device operating at 50Gb/s. Recently they have been pioneering Mid Infra-Red Silicon Photonics, mid-index photonics platforms, programmable photonics, and computing applications of silicon photonics, and in 2020 reported an integrated silicon modulator-driver combination operating at 100Gbps OOK without digital signal processing (DSP). In 2024 they reported a 308Gb/s MZI based modulator integrated with an electronic driver, and in 2020 reported a similar 200Gbd device, suggesting a 400Gb/s all-silicon solution without the need for energy hungry DSP may be within reach.

Reed has been a consultant to numerous companies in the field of Silicon Photonics, including Intel (USA), Bookham Technology (UK), Kotura (USA), Rockley Photonics (UK/USA), Optic2Connect (Singapore), and CompoundTek (Singapore). He is the founder of the UK Silicon Photonics Foundry CORNERSTONE, originally established to serve the UK academic community, but now has a majority of industry users and customers from 25 countries. He is also a founder of Silicon Photonics LiDAR company Pointcloud (USA and Switzerland).

He is a regular invited and contributing author to the major silicon photonics conferences around the world.  He has served on numerous international conference committees, and has also chaired many others. He has published almost 700 journal and conference papers, in the field of silicon photonics, including 192 invited/keynote/plenary talks. He was also the lead author of the first silicon photonics textbook “Silicon Photonics: An introduction,” published in 2004.

In 2013 he was the recipient of the IET Crompton Medal for Achievement in Energy, for his work on silicon photonics, and in 2014 he was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.  In 2019 he was awarded an industry prize (PIC award) for his contribution to the silicon photonics field. In 2023 he was awarded the SPIE Gold Medal, and the Sir Frank Whittle Medal (Royal Academy of Engineering).  He is a Fellow of Optica, the Royal Academy of Engineering, EOS, the Royal Society, and APS. He is also a recipient of the John Tyndall Award.