Presented by Flavio Delbono, Mayor, City of Bologna.

After receiving undergraduate degrees in Physics and Math from the University of Cincinnati and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, Robert Tkach joined Bell Labs in 1984 where he teamed up with Andrew Chraplyvy. They jointly addressed the challenges of optical nonlinearities and dispersion management. Tkach joined AT&T Labs in 1996 and Celion Networks in 2000. He rejoined Bell Labs in 2006 and returned to Crawford Hill where he is now Director of Advanced Photonics Research.

Tkach is extraordinarily active in his industry, serving as Chair of the Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) Steering Committee and on the Technical Advisory Board of the Optoelectronics Industry Data Association (OIDA). He has been General Co-Chair of OFC, Vice-President of the Optical Internetworking Forum, Associate Editor of the Journal of Lightwave Technology and a member of the IEEE LEOS Board of Governors. He has received the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award from the Research and Development Council of New Jersey and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the IEEE, and AT&T. Tkach received the 2008 John Tyndall Award jointly sponsored by the OSA and IEEE and in 2009 was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.