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Shapiro of EECS named director
of RLE
Cambridge, MA 12.13.2000
By Elizabeth A. Thomson
MIT News Office
 Jeffrey
H. Shapiro, who has studied optical and quantum communications
at the Research Laboratory of Electronics for some 30 years
and has been on the MIT faculty since 1973, will become the
lab's new director effective February 1.
The appointment was announced by Professor J. David Litster,
MIT's vice president and dean for research. After interviewing
some 50 RLE faculty and staff about possible candidates for
the position, he found that "over 90 percent thought Jeffrey
Shapiro was the best person, and most of the others had no opinion."
Professor Shapiro succeeds
Jonathan Allen, who died April 24 of complications from
a lengthy illness. Professor Allen had been RLE director since
1981; he guided the laboratory through numerous changes and
in many new research directions.
"Replacing Jon Allen will be a challenge, but I am sure that
Jeffrey Shapiro is up to it," Professor Litster said.
"RLE has been a wonderful research home for many exciting developments
over the years, and it is poised for even greater things in
the future," said Professor Shapiro. "I am honored and somewhat
awed to have the opportunity of leading RLE into this new era."
In his personal research, Dr. Shapiro, the Julius A. Stratton
Professor of Electrical
Engineering, focuses on problems of optical detection and
communication. He has developed theoretical and experimental
insights into the generation, detection and application of nonclassical
light beams. Professor Shapiro is the principal investigator
of a multidisciplinary team that is working on long-distance
quantum teleportation of photon states. Such technology, once
developed, will open new vistas in secure communication and
permit the networking of quantum computers.
RLE is MIT's oldest interdisciplinary research laboratory. Founded
in 1946, it grew out of the wartime Radiation Laboratory's pioneering
study of electronics.
Today, RLE is home to a wide range of sponsored research activities
centered in three broad areas: electronics and optics; communications
and signal processing; and "living systems," particularly language,
speech and hearing. Research at RLE is driven by the interests
of its investigators, encouraging overlap and flexible collaboration
between subject areas. The research is both basic and applied,
occupying the wide area between development of contemporary
technology and fundamental research.
RLE provides facilities and services to faculty and research
staff from various academic departments at MIT. It also supports
collaboration with other research laboratories, both at MIT
and elsewhere. The lab has 56 faculty members and approximately
600 faculty, staff and students.
Professor Shapiro has four degrees in electrical engineering
from MIT (SB 1967, SM, EE and PhD). His doctoral research was
a theoretical study of adaptive techniques for improved optical
communication through atmospheric turbulence.
From 1970 -73, Dr. Shapiro was an assistant professor of electrical
sciences and applied physics at Case Western Reserve University.
From 1973-85, he was an associate professor of electrical engineering
at MIT, and in 1985 he was promoted to professor. He served
as associate department head from 1989-99 and in 1999 he became
the Julius A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering.
Since June, he has been chair-elect of the MIT faculty, a position
he is resigning to become the director of RLE.
Dr. Shapiro is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, the Optical Society of America and the Institute
of Physics, and he is a member of SPIE (the International Society
for Optical Engineering). He has been an associate editor of
the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and the Journal
of the Optical Society of America. |
