Since its introduction a decade ago, probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) has evolved from a topic of academic interest to a mainstream, near ubiquitous technology adopted across a wide range of optical systems — from traditional long-haul deployments to compact pluggable transceivers.
In this panel, we will reflect on the progress made over the past ten years, examine the state-of-the-art in both research and products, and explore opportunities for future developments.
The key discussions to address in this panel are:
- The evolution of shaping algorithms and key implementations of PAS;
- Considerations for hardware implementation of probabilistic shaping, including complexity, parallelism, and latency;
- Shaping for pluggable DSP implementations and standardized PAS algorithms;
- PAS-enabled capabilities and future research directions, such as its application to non-AWGN channels (e.g., unamplified links and nonlinear channels) and its interactions with other system components (e.g., forward error correction and carrier phase recovery).
Organizers
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Stella Civelli
CNR-IEIIT, Italy
Stella Civelli is a researcher at the Institute of Electronics, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IEIIT). Her research focuses on coherent optical communications and secure optical networks, aiming to enable high-capacity and resilient infrastructures. Her main interests include optical communication theory, digital signal processing, fiber nonlinearity mitigation, and network security. She received her Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Florence in 2015 and a PhD in Photonic Technologies from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 2019, both with honors. She has been involved in national and European research and industrial projects.
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David Millar
Nokia, United States
Panelists
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Georg Böcherer
Ciena, Germany
Georg Böcherer obtained his M.Sc., Ph.D., and Dr.-Ing. habil degrees in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zürich (2007), RWTH Aachen University (2012), and Technical University of Munich (2017), respectively. From 2017 to 2020, he worked as a Senior Engineer for Huawei Technologies in Paris. From April 2020 to October 2025, he was a Principal Engineer at Huawei Technologies in Munich. Since November 2025, G. Böcherer is a Principal Research Scientist at Ciena. G. Böcherer is the inventor of Probabilistic Amplitude Shaping (PAS), for which he received a 2015 Bell Labs Prize, the 2017 Johann-Philipp-Reis-Preis, and the 2016 JLT Best Paper Award.
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Junho Cho
Nokia, United States
Junho Cho received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Seoul National University, Korea. He worked at Bell Labs in Seoul, Holmdel, and Murray Hill from 2010 to 2022 and joined Infinera, now part of Nokia, in Ottawa, Canada, in 2022. He served as Associate Editor for the IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology and Optics Express. He is a recipient of the Brain Korea 21 Outstanding Research Award (2009) and the Edison Patent Award (2021). His research interests include forward error correction, probabilistic constellation shaping, and digital signal processing for optical communications.
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Shahab Oveis Gharan
Ciena, Canada
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Marco Secondini
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy
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Mehdi Torbatian
Celero Communications, Canada
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Olga Vassilieva
1Finity Americas, Inc., United States
Olga Vassilieva Ph.D. is the Research Scientist with 1Finity Inc., a Fujitsu Company, Richardson, TX, USA. She specializes in research and development of high bit-rate coherent optical transmission systems, advanced optical modulation formats, and transmission impairment mitigation techniques. Dr. Vassilieva is a Senior Member of the IEEE Photonics Society, the author and co-author of numerous scientific papers and holds more than hundred US patents per current USPTO record.