Position: Assistant Professor in Digital & Microwave Photonics Group at TeCIP Institute Scoula Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA) Pisa since 2022
Education:
- D. in Emerging Digital Technologies from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, Italy, in 2016.
- Erasmus-Mundus joint Masters in Photonic Networks Engineering (MAPNET)- Double Degree
Aston University, Birmingham UK, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Pisa in 2012
Experience:
- Researcher, High Capacity & Secure Optical Communications (HC&SOC) lab, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, TeCIP Institute, Pisa from 2016 to 2021.
- Visiting Researcher – Optical Networks, British Telecom (BT) Research Labs, Ipswich UK in 2015.
- Senior Engineer – Optical Fiber Networks Etisalat-PTCL Pakistan from 2004 to 2010
Scientific Interests and Achievements
His current research interests include Microwave Photonics (MWP) applications for sensing and communications, specifically photonics-assisted MW/mm-wave signal generation, optical frequency combs, optoelectronic oscillators (OEOs) and space compliant hybrid integrated MWP subsystems for earth observation. He has more than 18 years of academic research and industry experience working in photonics/optical communications/telecommunications.
He was Principal Investigator for EU-Asi@Connect co-funded project “Software Defined Optical Networking (SDON) Research and Training Lab for TEIN NRENs”. Throughout his career, he has contributed to several EU, national and industry projects in research and project management roles. He was also part of a field trial of coherent optical systems in the scope of GÉANT Open Call project COFFEE between Milan-Finkenstien and for field trial Multi-Homodyne Coherent Detection for optical encryption and steganography over world’s first field deployed Multi-Core Fiber (MCF) in L’Aquila, Italy.
His PhD research, supported by Telecom Italia, at SSSA focused on dynamic optical networking using SBVTs based on multi-wavelength sources. For sabbatical period, he was affiliated with British Telecom Research Labs as visiting researcher where he built techno-economic model for SBVTs. He was a post-doctoral researcher for five years at SSSA working on diverse areas such on-chip Quantum random number generation (QRNG), optical communications and short reach optical links for 5G.
Dr. Imran has been recipient of the “Charles Kao Award” for Best Optical Communications & Networking Paper in 2017. He is also associate editor of Microwave and optical technology letters.
Teaching and Tutoring
He teaches the course titled “Performance evaluation metrics and methods for optoelectronic devices and systems” at TeCIP Institue. Dr. Imran is currently tutoring 2 PhD students.
Industry Experience
Prior to that, he was working for Etisalat-PTCL Pakistan in Optical Network Solutions team for six (06) years responsible for planning, design and testing of optical networks in metro, core and access domains.
Publications
He is co-author of 54 Journals and conferences and two patent proposals.