2024:


• August 2024: An invited talk "Evolution of photonics integrated circuits for microwave photonics applications" was delievered at the 16th Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO-PR 2024), held in Incheon, Korea, from August 4 to 9, 2024.
• April 2024: A keynote speech "Microwave photonics and AI" was delievered at the 2024 PhotonIcs and Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS2024), held in Chengdu, China, from 21 to 25 April, 2024.
  
• March 2024: Yiran Guan, a PhD student from the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was selected to receive a poster award (first place) at the Research Day Poster Competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering on 7 March 2024.
  
  2023:
  
• November 2023: An invited talk reporting our recent work on using "Quantum-Dash Mode-Locked Laser For Duplex Radio Over Fiber Links was presented at the 2023 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC 2023), held in Orlando, USA, from Nov. 12 to 16, 2023.
  
  2022:
  
• October 2022: An invited tutorial aricle entitled "Microwave Photonic systems" has been published in IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology in its Oct. 2022 issue. In the article, recent advances in microwave photonic systems are reviewed, including system architectures for photonic generation of low-phase-noise microwave signals, linearly chirped microwave waveforms, and random microwave waveforms, photonic processing of microwave signals using microwave photonic filters based on incoherent and coherent detection, and radio over fiber links based on coherent detection with increased spectral efficiency and sensitivity. Microwave photonic systems for high-speed and high-resolution optical sensing are also discussed.
• August 2022: Congratulations to Peng, a joint training PhD student (September 2019 - August 2021), on receiveing a 2022 IEEE Photonics Society Graduate fellowship. The IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship Program was created to honor outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of interest. Ten fellowships are awarded each year. Until this year, 8 PhD students in the MWPLab have been awarded the fellowship. The award ceremony will be made at the 2022 IEEE Photonics Conference, November 13-17, 2022, Vancouver, Canada.
  
  2021:
  
• November 2021: A plenary talk on "Advances in Microwave Photonic Systems" was delivered at the 2021 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP 2021), held on 15-17 November 2021 in Italy. The talk covers the recent advances in microwave photonic systems including new system architectures for the generation and processing of microwave signals. The use of coherent detection to transmit radio signals over fiber (radio over fiber) with increased spectral efficiency was also discussed. The implementation of optical sensors based on microwave photonics to translate the optical spectrum change to microwave frequqency change to increase the sensing speed and resolution was also discussed.
• June 2021: A tutorial aricle entitled "Microwave Photonic Sensors" has been published in IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology in its June 2021 issue. In the article, microwave photonic techniques for optical sensing demonstrated in the past few years are reviewed including high-speed and high-resolution sensing based on heterodyne beating of two optical wavelengths, the use of an optoelectronic oscillator to translate the optical wavelength shift to a microwave frequency change, and the use of wavelength-to-time mapping to translate the sensing information from the optical wavelength domain to the microwave frequency domain, to increase the interrogation speed and resolution. The use of photonic integrated circuits to achieve high-speed and high-resolution microwave photonic sensing is discussed.
  
  2020:
  
• July 2020: Congratulations to Zhiqiang, a joint training PhD student (Octoberber 2018 - May 2020), on receiveing a 2020 IEEE Photonics Society Graduate fellowship. The IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship Program was created to honor outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of interest. Ten fellowships are awarded each year. The award ceremony will be made at the 2020 IEEE Photonics Conference, September 28 - October 1, 2020.
• January 2020: Our recent work on Photonic Integrated Field-Programmable Disk Array Signal Processor has been published in Nature Communications. In the article, a scalable photonic integrated field-programmable disk array signal processor for ultra-fast signal processing was reported. The key contribution of the work is that a completely new photonic chip architecture using optical micro-disk resonators (MDRs) as the fundamental execution units to route, store and process optical signals is proposed. This chip architecture opens up a new avenue for the implementation of a programmable photonic signal processor and creates more functionalities and better performance. Thanks to the nature of ultra-compact size, strong wavelength selectivity and high optical-confining capacity of MDRs, the proposed photonic signal processor features high scalability, strong parallel computing capability, instant reconfigurability, and low power consumption.
  
  2019:
  
• October 2019: The 2019 International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP 2019) was held from October 7 to 10, 2019 in Shaw Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Over 150 people from over 20 countries joined the 3.5 day meeting. Three student papers were selected to receive the best student paper awards:
  
  1. Yannick Salamin, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Paper title: 300 GHz plasmonic receiver
  
  2. Sebastian Dülme, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, Paper title: 300 GHz photonic self-mixing imaging-system with vertical illuminated triple-transit-region photodiode terahertz emitters
  
  3. Zhiqiang Fan, University of Ottawa, Canada, Paper title: Widely tunable parity-time-symmetric optoelectronic oscillator based on a silicon microdisk resonator
  
• June 2019: Weifeng Zhang, a former post-doctoral fellow and PhD student of the MWPLab, was offered a faculty postion in Beijing Institute of Technology. Weifeng defended his PhD thesis entitled "SILICON PHOTONICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN MICROWAVE PHOTONICS" in May 2017 and then stayed in the MWPLab as a post-doctoral fellow for one year.
• April 2019: our work on programmable photonic integrated waveguide Bragg gratings for optical and microwave signal processing was highlighted in IEEE Photonics Society Newsletter in its 2019 April issue. Fiber Bragg gratings since the invention over 30 years ago by Hill et al in the Communications Research Center Canada have been extensively employed for various applications such as optical filtering, dispersion compensation, distributed fiber-optic sensing, and microwave photonic signal processing. The major limitation of a fiber Bragg grating is its limited reconfigurability. Once fabricated, the spectral response can be hardly tuned or with limited tunability via temperature or mechanical tuning. On the other hand, Bragg gratings implemented on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform can be electrically reconfigured at an ultra-fast speed, which can be employed for high-speed programmable photonic signal processing.
• March 2019: an invited talk was presented at OFC2019 in San Diego, to report our recent work on fully reconfigurable waveguide Bragg gratings for programmable photonic signal processing (PPT).
• March 2019: our work on Electrically programmable equivalent-phase-shifted waveguide Bragg grating for multichannel signal processing was reported at OFC2019 in San Diego, USA. An equivalent-phase-shifted waveguide Bragg grating, comapred with a regular phase-shifted waveguide Bragg grating, is easier to fabricate with much smaller fabrication errors (PPT).
• January 2019: a review article co-authored by D. Marpaung, J. P. Yao, and J. Capmany entitled "Integrated microwave photonics" was published in Nature Photonics.
• January 2019: The website for 2019 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP2019) is open: http://www.mwp2019.org.
• January 2019: Prof. Yao has been elected a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Photonics Society for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2019.
  
  2018:
  
• October 2018: The 2019 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (www.mwp2019.org) will be held in Ottawa at the Shaw Centre from October 7 to 10, 2019. See the slides and a video about Ottawa and the conference.
• October 2018: our work on silicon photonic FPGA was reported at MWP2018 in Toulouse, France. Similar to an electronic FPGA, a photonic FPGA can be reconfigured to perform diverse signal processing functions after manufacturing, but with a speed that can be 1000 times faster than an electronic FPGA (PPT).
• October 2018: Jiejun Zhang, a former PhD student of the MWPLab, was offered a faculty postion in Jinan University. Jiejun defended his PhD thesis entitled "Photonic Dispersive Delay Line for Broadband Microwave Signal Processing" in January 2017.
• September 2018: Prof. Yao has been elected Fellow of the Academy of Science, the Royal Society of Canada (RSC).
• June 2018: our work on Parity-Time Symmetry Optoelectronic Oscillator was published in Science Advances in the June 2018 issue. In the work, a new concept “Parity-Time Symmetry” is introduced, for the first time, to the field of Microwave Photonics. The key importance of the concept in microwave photonics is that it enables the implementation of an optoelectronic oscillator for single-frequency and ultra-low phase noise microwave generation without the need of an ultra-narrow optical or microwave filter. This is the very first demonstration that such a concept is successfully employed in a microwave photonic system. The employment of Parity-Time Symmetry in an optoelectronic oscillator overcomes the long existing mode-competition and mode-selection challenge which has severely limited the development and wide applications of optoelectronic oscillators.
  
• May 2018: Prof. Yao was awarded the 2018 R.A. Fessenden Award. Recipients of this medal are outstanding Canadian engineers recognized for their important contributions to the field of telecommunications engineering.
• April 2018: our work on a fully reconfigurable waveguide Bragg grating for programmable photonic signal processing, was published in Nature Communications in the April 2018 issue. The major contribution of the work is the proposition of a novel structure of a silicon grating which can be fast reconfigured as a programmable signal processor to perform multiple signal processing functions including temporal differentiation, microwave time delay, and frequency identification. The availability of ultrafast and reconfigurable gratings opens new avenues for programmable optical signal processing at the speed of light.
  
• January 2018: Hong Deng successfully defended his MASc thesis entitled "Real-time interrogation of optical sensors based on wavelength-to-time mapping" on January 17, 2018. The thesis was nominated by the defense committee for best thesis award.
  
  2017:
  
• Nov 2017: Weilin Liu received his PhD degree at the convocation of the University of Ottawa, held in the National Arts Center on 5 November 2017.
  
  
• Oct 2017: Prof. Yao was appointed Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters is a journal of the IEEE Photonics Society. It offers rapid, archival publication of original research relevant to photonics technology. Since its inception in 1989, the Journal has become the premier source of up-to-date information in the photonics field and has published leading results in photonic devices, systems, and networks.
• Oct 2017: A silicon photonic integrated optoelectronic oscillator was recently demonstrated at the MWPLab. A paper entitled "A Silicon Photonic Integrated Frequency-Tunable Optoelectronic Oscillator" summarizing the results was selected as a post-deadline paper at MWP2017 in Beijing and was presented in the post-deadline session on 25 October 2017.
  
• Oct 2017: Hong Deng, an MASc student from the MWPLab, has been selected to receive a 2017 IEEE Ottawa Photonics Student Best Paper Award (second place) for the paper entitled “High-Speed and High-Resolution Interrogation of a Fiber Bragg Grating Temperature Sensor” presented at the 2017 Photonic North Conference in Ottawa.
  
• Oct 2017: at the MWP International Steering Committee Meeting held on 24 October during MWP2017 in Beijing, Ottawa was selected host city for MWP2019. IEEE Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics is a primary conference for reseachers to present new results in the field of microwave photonics including new MWP devices, systems, to field trials. The meeting is held annually and rotates between the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.
  
• Oct 2017: Prof. Yao gave a tutorial at IPC2017 (Orlando, Oct. 1-5), talking about photonic integrated circuits for microwave photonics. PPT
  
• July 2017: a fully integrated microwave photonic passband filter on a silicon photonic chip was recently demonstrated at the MWPLab. The microwave photonic filter has a 3-dB bandwidth of 2.3 GHz with a frequency tunable range from 7 to 25 GHz. Full text
  
  
  
• June 2017: Jiejun Zhang and Xiang Chen received their PhD degree certificates at the convocation of the University of Ottawa, held in the Shaw Centre on 20 June 2017.
  
• May 2017: our work on an integrated parity-time symmetric wavelength-tunable single-mode microring laser was published in Nature Communications in the May 2017 issue. The key contribution of the work is that a monolithically photonic integrated parity-time symmetry wavelength-tunable single-mode microring laser was designed, fabricated and experimentally demonstrated. Stable and single-mode lasing without using an ultra-narrow band optical filter with a high sidemode suppression ratio exceeding 36 dB is demonstrated. The lasing wavelength is continuously tunable electronically with a tuning range of 0.22 nm.
  
• April 2017: Weilin Liu successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Ultra-fast Photonic Signal Processors Based on Photonic Integrated Circuits" on 26 April 2017.
  
• April 2017: Xiang Chen successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Coherent radio over fiber for broadband wireless access networks" on 25 April 2017. The thesis was nominated for best thesis prize.
  
• March 2017: Prof. Yao received an NSERC Research Tools and Instruments Grant of $150,000 to purchase an Optical Vector Analyzer to replace the old OVA for Integrated Microwave Photonics Research.
• February 2017: Prof. Yao received an NSERC Strategic Partnership Grant (SPG) of $552,000 over three years from The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), to develop Microwave photonics Techniques for 5G. Read uOttawa news release.
  
• January 2017: Jiejun successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Photonic Dispersive Delay Line for Broadband Microwave Signal Processing" on 24 Jan. 2017.
  
  2016:
  
  
• November 2016: The paper authored by Prof. Yao entitled "Microwave Photonics" published in IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology in 2009 was among the 20 highest cited papers in IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology both in terms of total citations and citations per year
• November 2016: Weifeng was selected to receive a Best Student Paper Award (Bronze) at the 2016 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP2016) for the paper entitled "Silicon-Based On-Chip Electrically Tunable Phase-Shifted Waveguide Bragg Grating for Integrated Microwave Photonic Applications" presented at the conference. MWP2016 was held in Long Beach, USA, on 31 October-3 November, 2016. This is the third consecutive year that a best student paper award was received by a PhD student from the MWPLab.
• August 2016: our work "A fully reconfigurable photonic integrated signal processor" published in Nature Photonics was featured in an article "The bandwidth bottleneck" published in Nature in August 2016.
• August 2016: Weifeng has been selected as one of the recipients of the IEEE Photonics Society (IPS) 2016 Graduate Student Fellowships . The IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship Program was created to honor outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of interest. Ten fellowships are awarded each year. The award ceremony will be made during the 2016 IEEE Photonics Conference, 2-6 October 2016, at Hilton Waikoloa Village, Waikoloa, Hawaii USA. Three PhD students from the group were selected to receive the fellowship in the last 4 years (Hiva 2012, Weilin 2015, Weifeng 2016).
• July 2016: The paper authored by Prof. Yao entitled "Microwave Photonics" published in IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology in 2009 was selected as one of the most impactful papers in the special paper collection A Third of a Century of Lightwave Technology. This special collection contains the most impactful papers from JLT's third of a century-long history, reflecting on the progress and impact that lightwave technologies have had on society.
• June 2016: Congratulations to Weilin and Xiang on receiving a scholarship ($6000 each) from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) to support their graduate studies in the University of Ottawa. The scholarship program was created by the CSC to support outstanding self-financed students studying abroad.
  
• June 2016: Congratulations to Weifeng and Xiang on receiving a prestigious 2016 SPIE scholarship ($2,500 each). The SPIE scholarship program was created by the the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) to support outstanding students for their potential long-range contribution to optics and photonics.
  
• June 2016: Prof. Yao is conferred the title of Distinguished University Professor of the University of Ottawa. The title of Distinguished University Professor is conferred on faculty members in recognition of exceptional scholarly achievement, pre-eminence in a field of knowledge and a solid teaching record. Read more
• February 2016: Prof. Yao and his team, in collaboration with Prof. Larry Coldren from the University of California Santa Barbara, has published a new study demonstrating the first fully reconfigurable photonic integrated signal processor, in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Photonics. Please read the uOttawa media release uOttawa scientist announces a breakthrough photonic signal processor.
  
  
• January 2016: Prof. Yao and two other scientists interviewed by Nature Photonics to comment on the development of programmable optical chips.
  
  2015:
  
• November 2015: Nasrin successfully defended her MASc thesis entitled "Silicon photonic devices for microwave signal generation and processing" on November 20, 2015.
  
• October 2015: Weifeng was selected by the Technical Program Committee of the 2015 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP2015) to receive the Best Student Paper Award for the paper entitled "Largely Chirped Microwave Waveform Generation Using a Silicon-Based On-Chip Optical Spectral Shaper" presented at the conference. MWP2015 was held in Paphos, Cyprus on 26-29 October, 2015.
  
  Beatrice Cabon, Stavros Iezekiel, Weifeng Zhang, and Jianping Yao.
  
• July 2015: Weilin has been selected as one of the recipients of the IEEE Photonics Society (IPS) 2015 Graduate Student Fellowships . The IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship Program was created to honor outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of interest. Ten fellowships are awarded each year. The award ceremony will be made during the 2015 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC) which is being held October 4 – 8, 2015, at the Hyatt Regency Reston, Reston, Virginia, USA.
  
• May 2015: Congratulations to Weilin and Jiejun on receiving a prestigious 2015 SPIE scholarship ($3000 and $2500). The SPIE scholarship program was created by the the International Society for Optics and Photonics to support outstanding students for their potential long-range contribution to optics and photonics.
  
• March 2015: Congratulations to Weilin on receiving a prestigious NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship ($35,000 per year). The Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program (CGS D) provides financial support to high calibre scholars who are engaged in a doctoral program in the natural sciences or engineering. Only top-ranked applicants will be selected to receive the CGS D scholarships.
  
• February 2015: Congratulations to Weifeng on receiving a scholarship ($6000) from the China Scholarship Council. The scholarship program was created to support outstanding self-financed students studying abroad.
  
• February 2015: Congratulations to Weilin on being selected as a finalist by IMS2015. At IMS, only a small percentage of student papers are selected. In 2014, 33 finalists were selected from 151 accepted student competition papers.
  
  2014:
  
• October 2014: Jiejun has been selected, with two other students from Japan and Australia, to receive a Young Scientist Award at MWP2014 in Sapporo, Japan. The award winners were selected based on the quality of the papers (review scores) and also the quality of the presentations at the conference.
• August 2014: Fanqi Kong successfully defended his MASc thesis entitled "Optoelectronic oscillators and its applications in transverse load sensing" on August 26, 2014.
• July 2014: Welcome four new members who joined the group in July 2014: Ting Hu, post-doctoral fellow, Dan Zhu, visiting research fellow, Enming Xu, visiting research fellow, and Olympio Coutinho, post-doctoral fellow.
  
• June 2014: The Editorial Board of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters (PTL) has selected our recent paper, X. Chen, T. Shao, and J. P. Yao, "Digital phase noise cancellation for a coherent-detection microwave photonic link," IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 805-808, Apr. 2014, to be one of the only three papers to be presented in the PTL section of the special "Hot Papers and Meet the Editors" session in the 2014 IEEE Photonics Conference in San Diego.
  
• June 2014: Hiva Shahoei successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled "Tunable slow and fast light generation and the applications in microwave photonics" on June 9, 2014.
  
  Jaques Albert, Jianping Yao, Hiva Shahoei, Jose Capmany, Tet Yeap, and Robert Boyd.
  
  
  Weilin Liu, Weifeng Zhang, Jiejun Zhang, Jianping Yao, Hiva Shahoei,
  Nasrin Ehteshami, Bruno Romeira, Fanqi Kong, and Xiang Chen.
  
• May 2014: Honglei Guo successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Miniaturized wavelength interrogation for the aircraft structural health monitoring and optofluidic analysis" on May 15, 2014. Honglei is currently working in JDS-Uniphase in Ottawa.


• March 2014: Weifeng Zhang, a PhD student from the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was selected to receive a poster award (third place, IEEE award) at the Research Day Poster Competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering on 27 March 2014.
  
  2013:
  
• November 2013: Wangzhe Li received his PhD degree at the Fall convocation of the University of Ottawa held in the National Arts Centre on 4 November 2013.
  
• Oct 2013: Wentao Cui successfully defended his MASc thesis entitled "Wavelength reuse in UWB over fiber networks" on October 23, 2013. The thesis was nominated by the defense committee for best thesis award. Wentao was offered a position by Ciena to work in the Systems Engineering Department.
  
• Oct 2013: Sebastien Blais successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Superstructured fiber Bragg gratings in microwave photonics applications" on October 1, 2013. Sebastien is currently working in Ciena.
  
• Sep 2013: Welcome Ruoming Li, a joint training PhD student, who joined the group in September.
  
• June 2013: Welcome two new members who joined the group recently: Nasrin Ehteshami, PhD student; Bruno Romeira, post-doctoral fellow funded by the Portuguese government.
  
• May 2013: Congratulations to Hiva on being selected to receive an SPIE scholarship ($3000)! This is a second scholarship received by Hiva from a major photonics/optics society. In 2012, Hiva was awarded an IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Fellowship.
  
• April 2013: Wangzhe Li successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Photonic Generation of Microwave and Millimeter Wave Signals" on 3 April 2013. His thesis was nominated by the defense committee for best thesis award.
  
  
  
• September 2013: A new NSERC Discovery grant "Silicon Photonics for Microwave Photonics Applications" was approved for 5 years, $61,000 per year.
• March 2013: Fanqi Kong, a MASc student from the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was selected to receive a poster award (third place, IEEE award) at the Research Day Poster Competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering on 27 March 2013.
  
  
  
  
  2012:
  
• October 2012: Prof. Yao was appointed as an IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer for 2013-2015.
• October 2012: Prof. Yao was selected to recieve an inaugural OSA Outstanding Reviewer Award.
• September 2012: Welcome new students who joined the Group in September: Jiejun Zhang (PhD student), Yang Chen (exchange PhD student), and Gao Liang (exchange PhD student).
• August 2012: Welcome new students who joined the Group in August: Xiang Chen (PhD student) and Fanqi Kong (MASc student).
• August 2012: Welcome Tong Shao who joined our Group as a post-doctoral fellow on August 1, 2012.
• July 2012: Congratulations to Hiva, who has been selected to receive an IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship for 2012. The IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship Program was created to honor outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of interest. Ten fellowships are awarded each year. The award ceremony will be made during the 2012 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC) which will be held on September 23 - 27, 2012, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, Burlingame, California, USA.
• May 2012: Prof. Yao’s University Research Chair in Microwave Photonics has been renewed. Read More
• April 2012: Prof. Yao was elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). Members of the CAE are nominated and elected by their peers (current CAE members) to honorary fellowship in the Academy in view of their distinguished achievements and career-long service to the engineering profession. The Academy has approximately 300 active members and 100 emeritus members.
  
  
  New Fellows inducted into the Academy at the Annual Symposium on Thursday June 21, 2012 at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
• February 2012: Hiva Shahoei, a PhD student from the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was selected to receive a poster award (third place) at the Research Day Poster Competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering on the 9th of February 2012.
  
  
  Hiva with her poster.
• February 2012: Welcome Dr. Mugang Wang who joined the the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory in January 2012 as a Visting Reseracher.
  
  2011:
• December 2011: Prof. Yao was recently interviewed by Dr. Rachel Won, senior editor of Nature Photonics, to talk about microwave photonics. Microwave photonics shines, Rachel Won, Nature Photonics, 5, 736 (2011)
• November 2011: Prof. Yao was elevated to IEEE Fellow for contributions to photonic generation and processing of ultra-wideband signals.
  
  
  Photonics Society members who have been elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellows: (From left to right) Hideo Kuwahara (Photonics Society President), Jianping Yao, Ashok Krishnamoorthy, Yuichi Matsushima, Tetsuya Mizumoto, and Ping-Kong Wai.
• November 2011: Welcome a new student who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently: Weifeng Zhang, PhD student.
• November 2011: Prof. Yao received a Strategic Projects Grant of $438,000 over three years from The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), to develop optical broadband infrastructures for wired and wireless area networks.
  
  The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology announces Strategic Project Grants to support 70 scientific teams at universities across the country.
• October 2011: Chao Wang and Weilin Liu received their PhD and MASc degrees at the Fall convocation of the University of Ottawa on 30 October 2011.
  
  
  Chao received his PhD degree at the Fall convocation on 30 October 2011.
  
  
  Weilin received his MASc degree at the Fall convocation on 30 October 2011.
• September 2011: Weilin Liu successfully defended his MASc thesis entitled "Real-Time Interrogation of Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors Based On Chirped Pulse Compression" on 19 September 2011. The thesis was nominated by the defense committee for best thesis prize.
• September 2011: Yichen Han successfully defended his MASc thesis entitled "All-Optical Microwave Signal Processing" on 8 September 2011.
• September 2011: Welcome two new students who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently: Peiwen Chen, MASc student, and Wentao Cui, MASc student.
• July 2011: Congratulations to Honglei and Wangzhe on being selected to receive an IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship for 2011. The IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship Program was created to honor outstanding Photonics Society student members pursuing graduate education within the Photonics Society field of interest. Ten fellowships are awarded each year. The award ceremony will be made during the Awards Banquet at the 2011 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC) at Arlington, Virginia, USA on Monday 10th October, 2011.
  
  This is the second and third graduate fellowships received from the Photonics Society by PhD students from the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory. In 2009, Chao was awarded a Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship. In addition to the Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship, Chao and Wangzhe also received an MTT-S (IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society) Graduate Student Fellowship for 2010 and 2011.
  
  
  Honglei was presented the student fellowship certificate at the 2011 IEEE Photonics Society Conference.
• May 2011: Weilin Liu, a MASc student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been recently awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship as an international student. In Ontario, only 60 international students are selected each year to recive the scholarship. Congratulations!
• April 2011: Congratulations to Wangzhe who was recently selected by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Education Committee to receive an MTT-S Graduate Fellowship for 2011. The award consists of a check for $6,000 and a certificate of recognition from the society and is presented at a special Student Awards Luncheon held during the IMS 2011 (June 6-9). This is the second consecutive year that an MTT-S Graduate fellowship was presented to a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory. Last year, Chao Wang was selected to receive the fellowship for 2010. Chao is currently an NSERC post-doctoral fellow in UCLA.
• March 2011: Wangzhe Li, a PhD student of the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was awarded a scholarship of $5,000 from the China Scholarship Council. The scholarship program was created to support outstanding self-financed students studying abroad. Congratulations!
• February 2011: Wangzhe Li and Yichen Han, a PhD student and a MASc student from the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received the first-place and third-place poster awards at the Research Day Poster Competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering on the 3rd of February 2011.
• January 2011: Chao Wang completed his PhD studies in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory and joined UCLA as an NSERC post-doctoral fellow in January 2011.
  
  2010:
• December 2010: Chao Wang successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Photonic generation and processing of microwave arbitrary waveforms based on advanced fiber Bragg gratings" on 15 December 2010. His thesis was nominated by the defense committee for best thesis award.
  
  
  Chao and the members of the defence committee.
• December 2010: Dr. Shilong Pan, a Vision 2010 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory from Aug. 2008 to Nov. 2010, was recently offered a position as a Professor in the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
• October 2010: Congratulations to Chao Wang, who has been awarded a best student paper award (second place) at the IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP 2010), held in Montreal, Canada, from October 5-9, 2010.
• September 2010: Welcome two new members who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently (September 7, 2010): Dr. Montasir Qasymeh, MITACS post-doctoral fellow and Imran Khan, MSc student.
• April 2010: Congratulations to Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, who was recently selected by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Education Committee to receive an MTT-S Graduate Fellowship.
  
  Chao was presented the student fellowship certificate at IMS 2010.
• March 2010: Congratulations to Honglei Guo, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, who was recently awarded an NSERC post-graduate scholarship. The NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships (PGS) Program provides financial support to high-calibre students who are engaged in master's or doctoral programs in the natural sciences or engineering.
• March 2010: Congratulations to Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, who was recently awarded an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship. The NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowships Program provides support to a core of the most promising researchers at a pivotal time in their careers.
• March 2010: Wangzhe Li, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received the first prize ($10,000) at the Entrepreneurship and Innovation competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering. Congratulations!
• March 2010: Honglei Guo, a PhD student of the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was awarded a scholarship of $5,000 from the China Scholarship Council. The scholarship program was created to support outstanding self-financed students studying abroad. Congratulations!
• February 2010: Honglei Guo, a PhD student of the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been selected as one of the three finalists in the OCRI Futures Award: Student Researcher of the Year. See Faculty of Engineering news.
• February 2010: Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received a poster award (second-place) at the Research Day Poster organized by the Faculty of Engineering on the 4th of February 2010.
• The 2010 International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics (MWP 2010) will be held in Montreal, Canada, from October 5-9, 2010. Please click to view the first Call for Papers.
  
  2009:
• Welcome Ze Li who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently (November 23, 2009).
• Prof. Jianping Yao was elected by the Board of Directors of The Optical Society of America (OSA) a fellow of the Society for major contributions to the optical generation and processing of microwave and UWB signals.
  
  
  Dr. Yao was presented the fellowship certificate by the OSA president Dr. James C. Wyant at OFC 2010.
• October 2009: Prof. Jianping Yao received a New Collaboration Grant from the Canadian Institute for Photonic Innovations to develop a high speed miniaturized sensor interrogator based on mechanically scannable planar optical waveguides. The work would be a collaboration with The National Research Council Institute for Microstructural Sciences (NRC-IMS).
• September 2009: Welcome new students who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently: Yichen Han, MASc student, Weilin Liu, MASc student, Hiva Shahoei, PhD student, and Shawn Kostyk, MASc student.
• September 2009: Chao Wang won the 2009 IEEE Photonics Society (formerly LEOS) Ottawa Chapter Student Paper . His paper "Simultaneous optical spectral shaping and wavelength-to-time mapping for photonic microwave arbitrary waveform generation" is recognized by the selection committee an excellent representation of high quality research and technology advancement. Congratulations!
• Welcome Junqiang Zhou who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently (August 6, 2009) as an exchange PhD student from Nanyang Technological University.
• Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has recently been selected by The IEEE Photonics Society Membership Committee to receive a prestigious 2009 IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship . Congratulations!
  
  Chao ( third from the left) was presented the student fellowship certificate at the 2009 IEEE Photonics Society Conference.
• Congratulations to Chao Wang, who was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship! Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, at $50,000 per year for a maximum of three years, is the most important, prestigious and sought-after scholarships for doctoral students. See uOttawa news.
• Honglei Guo, a PhD student of the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been selected by the SPIE Board of Directors and the Scholarship Committee to receive a 2009 SPIE Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering in the amount of $3,000. Congratulations!
• Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received the best student paper award at the 2009 Asia-Pacific Microwave Photonics Conference. The conference was held in Beijing from 22 to 24 April 2009.
• Welcome two new members who joined the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory recently (April 1, 2009): Dr. Ming Li, post-doctoral fellow and Dr. Davide Janner, visiting post-doctoral fellow.
• Honglei Guo, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received the second prize ($7,500) at the Entrepreneurship and Innovation competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering. Congratulations!
• Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received recently a scholarship ($5,000) from the China Scholarship Council. The scholarships are awarded to outstanding self-financed students studying abroad. Congratulations!
• The MWPLab received a grant of $41,364 from CMC Microsystems to fabricate DFB semiconductor laser and laser array with chirped structure based on the equivalent chirp technology. The fabrication will be done in the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre.
• Dr. Byung-Min Jung, a post-doctoral fellow in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was recently offered a position as a Research Professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea.
• Wangzhe Li, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, received a poster award (first-place) at the Research Poster Competition organized by the Faculty of Engineering.
  
  2008:
• Dr. Shilong Pan was awarded an Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation sponsored Vision 2010 Postdoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship is valued at $50,000 per year for two years.
• Honglei Guo, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, was awarded a Doctoral Research Scholarship of the University of Ottawa.
• Chao Wang received a travel grant from the Ontario Centres of Excellence to present a paper at IEEE/LEOS Annual Meeting, held on 9-13 November 2008 in Newport Beach, CA, USA.
• On October 1, 2008, the International Steering Committee approved our proposal to hold 2010 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Dr. Afshin Daryoush and Dr. Jianping Yao will serve as the General and TPC chairs of the conference.
• Welcome two new members who joined the MWPLab recently (August and September 2008): Haiyin Xia, visiting PhD student, Hongqian Mu, visiting PhD student.
• Prof. Yao has been awarded an NSERC 2008 Discovery Accelerator Supplements award. The Discovery Accelerator Supplements award is valued at $120,000 for three years.
• George Qi successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Optical generation and distribution of millimeter-wave signals and optical up-conversion for radio-over-fiber applications" on 29 April 2008.
• Chao Wang, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been recently awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Congratulations!
• Chao Wang, a PhD student of the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been selected by the SPIE Board of Directors and the Scholarship Committee to receive an SPIE Scholarship in Optical Science and Engineering in the amount of $2000. As one of the recipients of the 2008 SPIE Scholarships, the organization recognizes Mr. Wang as a future leader of photonics in Canada, and in the World in general. Congratulations!
• Prof. Yao (with Prof. Azana) received an NSERC Strategic project grant to develop ultrahigh-speed optical signal characterization techniques for real-time evaluation and monitoring of photonics and electro-optic devices and systems.
• Prof. Yao received a research grant from OCE - Centre of Excellence for Photonics to support his collaboration with ICFO in developing innovative photonic systems for applications in broadband wireless access networks, sensor networks, and biomedical systems.
  
  2007:
• Yu Yan successfully defended his Master's thesis entitled "Photonic microwave filters with negative and complex coefficients" on 27 November 2007. He is currently employed by OZ Optics, a supplier of fiber optic products in Ottawa.
• Welcome three new members who joined MWPLab recently (in November 2007): Xihua Zou, exchange PhD student, Wangzhe Li, PhD student, and Byung-Min Jung, Post-doctoral fellow.
• Prof. Yao (with Prof. Darcie) received an NSERC Strategic project grant to develop Tera-Hertz Imaging and Spectroscopy technologies.
• On 15 June 2007, the fourth NSERC strategic project meeting was held in the School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa. At the meeting, a radio over fiber (RoF) system was demonstrated in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory. The RoF system supports duplex operation with two channels optically multiplexed based on optical WDM technology. The transmission of high-definition video signals for both channels was demonstrated. Nine presentations were also given at the meeting to report the progress of the project.
  
  
  
  
• Prof. Jianping Yao has been invited to present a tutorial on Microwave Photonics at OFC2008, to be held from February 24-28, 2008 in San Diego, CA, USA. As the largest (over 13,000 participants in 2007) and most comprehensive international event for optical communications, the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) provides an established forum for optical communications education and development.
• Prof. Jianping Yao received an NSERC SRO (Special Research Opportunities) grant of $187,000 for the pioneer work in UWB over fiber. This work is carried out at the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory in collaboration with European partners under the project ISIS.
• Prof. Jianping Yao received an NSERC RTI (Research Tools and Instruments) grant of $129,966 to purchase a signal source analyzer, a microwave down-converter and a broadband microwave amplifier.
• Fei Zeng, a former PhD student of the MWPLab, was selected as one of the three finalists for the OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) Student Researcher of the Year Award.
• Prof. Jianping Yao was the recipient of the 2007 George S. Glinski Award for Excellence in Research of the Faculty of Engineering.
  
  2006:
• Fei Zeng defended his PhD thesis on 20 December 2006. His thesis was nominated by the defense committee for Doctoral Award! Fei will be working as an NSERC post-doctoral fellow in MIT from January 2007. Congratulations!
• Howard Rideout, a MASc student, defended his Master's thesis on 23 November 2006. Howard's thesis was nominated by the defense committee for best thesis award. Howard was offered a research position in the Communications Research Centre after his defense. Congratulations!
• Prof. Jianping Yao received a New Collaboration Grant from CIPI to set up a collaborative project with NRC-IMS, to develop a miniaturized sensor interrogator for air vehicle structural health monitoring.
• Fei Zeng, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been awarded the prestigious NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Congratulations!
• The Microwave Photonic Research Laboratory is one of the nineteen participants (also the only participant from Canada) in a European project ISIS, to develop low-cost optical solutions for broadband access and the merging of wireless and photonic technologies. This project, started from January 2006, is funded by the European Commission under the sixth EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.
• Zhichao Deng (a MASc student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, who received his MASc degree in 2005) received a job offer from Lucent Technologies to work in the DWDM Department as a Research Engineer. Congratulations!
  
  2005:
• Prof. Jianping Yao was awarded a strategic grant by NSERC (with K. Wu, R. Kashyap and X. Zhang) for a 3-year project "Millimeter-wave Photonic Techniques for Broadband Communication and Sensor Applications" funded at $156,000 per annum.
• George Qi, a PhD student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Congratulations!
• Prof. Jianping Yao received a New Collaboration Grant from CIPI to set up a collaborative project with CRC, to develop an all-optical software-defined radio transceiver at mm-wave frequencies.
• Prof. Jianping Yao received the 2005 International Creative Research Award of the University of Ottawa.
• Prof. Jianping Yao received an NSERC equipment grant of $75,910 to purchase an ultrashort pulsed laser source and an optical auto/cross correlator.
• Sebastien Blais, a Master's student in the Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory, has been awarded an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship to support his PhD research in the University of Ottawa. The scholarships are awarded only to top-ranked PGS applicants. Congratulations!
• Prof. Jianping Yao was invited by the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, as an invited professor from January to March 2005.
  
  2004:
• A paper co-authored by Sebastien Blais and Jianping Yao received the "Best Poster Award" on 27 September 2004 in Ottawa at the 2004 Photonics North Conference.
  
  2003:
• Our work on diffuse infrared (IR) wireless home networking was featured in the June 2003 issue of Photonics Spectra: Holography offers eye-safe IR networking.
• Prof. Jianping Yao received major funding of $597,648 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Innovation Trust, to set up a Microwave Photonics Research Laboratory in the University of Ottawa.

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