TRANSNET director wins IOP Thomas Young Medal
Director of the TRANSNET Programme Professor Polina Bayvel has been awarded the 2021 Institute of Physics Thomas Young Medal and Prize for distinguished contributions to the field of optical communications.
Professor Polina Bayvel, director or the TRANSNET Programme and Head of the Optical Networks Group at UCL, has been awarded the 2021 Institute of Physics Thomas Young Medal and Prize. She is the first woman and the first UCL academic to receive this prestigious award.
The Institute of Physics (IOP) is the professional body and learned society for physics, and the leading body for practicing physicists, in the UK and Ireland. The IOP annual awards celebrate excellence in physics across research, education, outreach, and application and proudly reflect the wide variety of people, places, organisations, and achievements that make physics such an exciting discipline.
Professor Polina Bayvel has been awarded the 2021 Thomas Young Medal and Prize for distinguished contributions to the development of optical communications and the understanding of the physics and mitigation of nonlinear phenomena in optical fibre transmission. This is the first Thomas Young award for a UCL academic, and Professor Bayvel is the first woman to receive the award. She said:
"I am deeply honoured to receive this award. Young was an exceptional polymath, who made major contributions to optics and so many other fields – it is humbling to receive an award bearing his name, and doubly so to be the first UCL recipient.
Our department has a long history of pioneering research in optics and wave propagation in different media, and I receive the award in tribute and gratitude to my two mentors who sadly passed away this year, Professor Sir Eric Ash and Professor John Midwinter, and to my colleagues and students contributing to the world-leading optical communications research of our Optical Networks Group."
Polina has led the TRANSNET Programme since 2018. Congratulations from all the team!
Links
IOP Awards
2021 Thomas Young Medal and Prize
Previous Thomas Young Medal and Prize recipients
Professor Polina Bayvel
Optical Networks Group
UCL Electronic and Electrical Engineering