A-Star Young Scientist Award 2002
(Straits Times 24 September 2002)

LUMINARIES in SCIENCE 

Congratulations to winners of the prestigious National Science and Technology Awards and the Young Scientist Award.

Citation  Joint winner of Singapore National Academy of Science Young Scientist Award for Physical, Information & Engineering Sciences Category in 2002  "For his research on next generation optical communication systems"

The tremendous pace at which information technology is developing is fuelling the need for communications using high capacity optical fibres. High repetition and ultrashort optical pulse sources are of vital importance for the implementation of the next generation high bit-rate optical fibre communication systems. In particular, mode-locked fiber laser has the potential to generate inexpensive and ultrashort pulses by locking the spectral components in phase. Mode-locked passive and active kinds. 

Dr Shum Ping's research on next generation optical communication systems has created an area of excellence in the Network Technology Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University. One active mode-locked fibre laser and one passive mode-locked fibre laser has been set up in his laboratory. The active fibre laser can achieve 20 GHz transmission with pulse widths of tens of pico seconds. For passive mode-locked fibre laser, 10 nm spectral width and 250 femto seconds soliton pulse has been achieved.