15 Mar 2026
13:00 - 15:30
Room 515B
The unprecedented growth of AI models’ size and complexity made interconnecting XPUs a de facto standard for improving accelerator performance and unlocking a shared pool of memory and compute resources, putting immense pressure on the backend – also known as the scale-up – network, given that it carries ~85% of the data traffic and is today copper-based. To compete with such mature technology, photonic solutions are required to address simultaneously a multitude of challenges, including power consumption, thermal management, reliability and system cost together with large radix, exceptional bandwidth and near-zero latency. This requires a holistic approach to design, where aspects such as packaging and signal integrity play a key role in enabling photonics to reach its peak performance. This workshop aims to explore how photonics can extend the scaling trajectory that copper has enabled across previous interconnect generations and what are the prerequisites for mass-deployment of photonics in the scale-up domain.
The key questions to address in this workshop are:
- What is the target energy efficiency and FIT (failures in time) for photonics to become competitive with copper?
- Which optical sources and modulation technologies hold the potential to address all scale-up requirements?
- Should photonic solutions for scale-up strive to be resilient to harsh thermal environment of XPUs or is thermally stable environment an imperative for adopting photonics?
- What are the design requirements allowing DSP to be eliminated?
- What are the requirements for packaging density, physical dimensions and cost/bit for optics in the scale-up network?
- What are the gaps in the supply chain that limit large-scale photonics deployment in scale-up?
- Which emerging photonic technologies or disruptive system breakthroughs are most likely to reshape the future trajectory of scale-up networks?
Organizers
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Angelina Totovic
Celestial AI, Greece
Angelina Totovic is a Senior Staff Engineer at Celestial AI, specializing in the design, modeling, and verification of photonic integrated circuits for high-performance die-level optical interconnect platforms in AI factories. She earned her PhD in Nanoelectronics and Photonics from the University of Belgrade in 2018. Her expertise spans device-level physics, system architecture, and neuromorphic photonics. She is a member of IEEE and Optica and actively contributes to the community, serving as an OFC N2 subcommittee member, Optica APC-IPR 2026 Program Chair, and IPC 2026 Member-at-Large. She has coauthored more than 50 publications and holds 4 patents.
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Connie Chang-Hasnain
Berxel Photonics, United States
Connie Chang-Hasnain is Chairperson of Berxel Photonics Co. Ltd., X.Q. Deng is a Presidential Chair Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) and Whinnery Chair Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and an international member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Prof. Chang-Hasnain’s research interests range from semiconductor optoelectronic devices to materials and applications. She has been honored with the 2024 IEEE Nick Holonyak Jr. Medal, 2018 Okawa Prize, 2015 UNESCO Medal for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies, and 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Lightwave Technology 2007-2012, a member of the IEEE LEOS Board of Governors, the OSA Board of Directors, and the 2021 President of Optica.
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Mahdi Nikdast
Colorado State University, United States
Mahdi Nikdast is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, where he directs the Electronic-PhotoniC System Design (ECSyD) Laboratory. His research lies at the intersection of integrated photonics, high-performance computing (HPC), and advanced optical interconnects and packaging. He focuses on the design, modeling, and optimization of photonic and electronic–photonic heterogeneous integrated systems to enable scalable, energy-efficient, and high-bandwidth computing architectures for next-generation scale-up and scale-out networks.
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Matthew Traverso
Broadcom, United States
Matthew Traverso is a Distinguished Engineer for the Broadcom Optical Systems Division (OSD) with a focus on next-generation optical interconnect solutions, including co-packaged optics. He has led the development of multiple high-volume optical module products at 100 Gbps and beyond. Matt has been active in the development and definition of optical communications standards and optical form factors since 2000 including as the original editor of the CFP MSA (Multi-Source Agreement). He has dozens of journal publications and has over 30 patents awarded and pending. He graduated from Stanford University in Materials Science & Engineering
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Paraskevas Bakopoulos
NVIDIA, Greece
Paraskevas Bakopoulos leads NVIDIA’s Photonic Systems group in Greece, directing research on photonic systems for accelerated computing. His work focuses on advanced optical networking technologies and architectures to enable greater bandwidth, improved energy efficiency, and enhanced system availability in HPC and data center environments. His expertise spans high-speed optical interconnects, optical switching, and photonics-enabled technologies for next-generation computing systems. Previously, he was a Senior Staff Engineer at Mellanox Technologies and Senior Researcher at the National Technical University of Athens. He has coauthored 170 papers and holds several patents in photonics and datacenter networks.
Speakers
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Chris Fludger
AttoTude, Germany
Chris Fludger is DSP Architect at Attotude, working on advanced interconnect technology based on wired THz transceivers. Previously, he was head of DSP development at Infinera Germany, specializing in System Design and Digital Signal Processing for flexible communications. At Cisco and CoreOptics, he worked on the development of several generations of coherent optical transceivers. He has received Master's and Doctorate degrees in electronic engineering from Cambridge University, UK. At Nortel Networks his focus was electronic signal processing, advanced modulation techniques and Raman amplification. A long-time supporter of OFC, he was Program Chair in 2022, and General Chair in 2024.
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Chris Kocot
Coherent, United States
Christopher Kocot, Ph.D., is a Fellow in the CTO Office at Coherent Corp., where he specializes in photonics, fiber optics, and high-speed optical interconnects. He brings more than 30 years of experience from HP Labs, Agilent Labs, Finisar, II-VI, and Coherent. Dr. Kocot has authored over 100 publications, co-authored a VCSEL book chapter with Dr. Julie Eng, and holds more than 30 patents spanning transistors, LEDs, photodetectors, and lasers. He earned his Ph.D. in device physics through a Stanford–Warsaw University exchange program. Outside of work, he enjoys skiing, hiking, swimming, and traveling.
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Janet Chen
Nvidia, United States
Dr. Janet Chen is Director of Silicon Photonics Development at NVIDIA, where she leads advancements in photonic interconnect technology and CPO development for large-scale AI systems. Her work spans photonic integrated circuits, microring‑based links, coherent optics, and mixed‑signal/packaging co‑design for energy‑efficient data center networks. Previously, she held R&D and product leadership roles at HP Labs, Foxconn Optical Interconnect Technologies, NeoPhotonics/Lumentum, and Meta. She received her BS in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University and MS/PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC Santa Barbara. Shen is a Senior Member of IEEE and actively participates on the technical committees for OFC and ECOC.
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John Jost
Enlightra, Switzerland
Dr. John Jost is a physicist known for pioneering work in quantum information and optical frequency combs, including breakthroughs at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, with Nobel laureates Dave Wineland and John Hall. A former Marie Curie Fellow at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, he is co-founder and co-CEO of Enlightra, where he leads development of chip-scale microresonator frequency comb lasers for high-capacity DWDM optical interconnects. His work focuses on translating nonlinear photonics into deployable multi-wavelength laser sources enabling scalable, energy-efficient fiber-optic communication systems for data centers, AI hardware, and next-generation optical networks.
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Kazuya Nagashima
Furukawa Electric, Japan
Kazuya Nagashima received B.E. and M.E. degrees from Sophia University, Tokyo, in 2009 and 2011. Since joining Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. in 2011, he has been engaged for over a decade in developing and commercializing optical modules for high-speed optical communications.
He is currently Principal Researcher at the Photonics Laboratory in Chiba, Japan, working on ultra-compact optical transceivers for co-packaged optics. He is a member of IEEE and Japan Institute of Electronics Packaging (JIEP) and has received multiple awards, including Best Young Researcher and Best Paper Awards from IEEE CPMT Symposium Japan and JIEP. -
Lenin Patra
Marvell, United States
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Joyce Poon
University of Toronto , Canada
Joyce Poon is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. From May 2024 until December 2025, she was the Head of Photonics Architecture at Lightmatter. From 2018 until July 2024, she served as Director at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics. Prof. Poon and her team have worked on a wide range of topics in silicon photonics, including silicon nitride integration, hybrid lasers, and visible spectrum integrated optics. Prof. Poon obtained the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2007. She is an Optica Fellow and a Fellow of the IEEE.
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I-Hsing Tan
Broadcom, United States
Dr. I-Hsing Tan joined Avago Technologies in 2008 and is currently a Marketing Director at Broadcom, specializing in optical components such as light-emitting diodes and laser communication. His current work focuses on 100G-400G laser chips and photodetectors, spanning both multimode and single-mode technologies for AI data center applications.
Prior to his current role, Dr. Tan dedicated his career to the research, development, and marketing of optoelectronic-based components, including solid-state light-emitting diodes and high-speed optical communication devices.
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Michal Lipson
Columbia University, United States
Professor Michal Lipson pioneered critical building blocks in the field of Silicon Photonics, which today is recognized as one of the most promising directions for solving the major bottlenecks in microelectronics. She is the inventor of over 45 issued patents and has co-authored more than 300 scientific publications, and is the co-founder of the silicon photonics for AI startup Xscape Photonics. In recognition of her work in silicon photonics, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her numerous awards include the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Blavatnik Award, Optica’s R. W. Wood Prize, the John Tyndall Award, the IEEE Photonics Award, and an honorary degree from Trinity College, University of Dublin. She was elected the President of Optica in 2023, formerly known as The Optical Society. Since 2014, every year she has been named by Thomson Reuters as a top 1% highly cited researcher in the field of Physics
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Phil Winterbottom
Celestial AI, United States
Phil Winterbottom is the Chief Technology Officer at Celestial AI, where he works across all aspects of applying silicon photonics to AI interconnects. Prior to joining Celestial AI, Phil founded several startups and led them from initial concept to revenue. He began his career at Bell Labs in the Computer Science Research Center, where he worked on the Plan 9 Operating System, parallel compilers, and high-performance networking. In recognition of his contributions to operating systems, he was named a Bell Labs Fellow in 1999. Phil studied computer science and electrical engineering at King’s College and was a Lloyd’s of London Research Fellow at City University before moving to the United States.