On April 11, 2019, the leading-edge science and technology lectures on the theme of “High port count integrated photonic switches” by Dr. Richard Penty, the University of Cambridge, were successfully held in Sipailou Campus. The lecture was sponsored by the Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Graduate School, the Research and Development Department of the Party Committee, the International Cooperation Department, the Personnel Department, the Research Institute, the Social Science Department, and the Academic Affairs Office, organized by the Graduate Student Association, the Student Science Association, and the Student Union, co-organized by the School of Electrical Science and Engineering, the Center for Postgraduate Innovation and Academic Exchange of Electronic Information in Jiangsu Province, the IEEE Nanjing Chapter, the Jiangsu Optical Society, and the Jiangsu Vacuum Society.
Dr. Richard Penty currently serves as the mastership of Sidney Sussex College and professor of the Department of Engineering in the University of Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the IET in 2012, and became the head of the phonotics research activity in CUED in 2019. He is a member of the Search Committee for the £1m Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. He is editor-in-chief of the IET Optoelectronics Journal, member of the Board of Directors of the Tyndall National Institute, Ireland and chair of the Steering Committee of the EPSRC Compound Semiconductor Hub in Cardiff. He is the co-founder of Zinwave, PervasID and eComm, start-up companies from the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Richard Penty’s lecture attracted tons of people including students in Jiulonghu Campus and faculties from other universities. There were two parts in the activity, Guest Professor award ceremony and academic lecture.
At first, Prof. Litao Sun, the Dean of School of Electronic Science and Engineering, hosted the ceremony and introduced Dr. Richard Penty. As the representative of Southeast University, Prof. Baoping Wang, the vice-president, awarded the appointment letter of Guest Professor. After that, Dr. Richard Penty expressed his strong gratitude and claimed to promote cooperation and common development of two universities in the electrical and information fields.
In the second part, Dr. Richard Penty gave a brief introduction to the Department of Engineering in the University of Cambridge. In the following lecture, he reviewed the switches fabricated using generic foundries, the performance of SOA switches and hybrid MZI–SOA switches. The scalability of hybrid switch assessed by using a recalculating loop leaded to the feasibility of an energy-efficient 128×128 switch. He also presented the feasibility of extending the port count to that higher than 1000×1000.
