Alan Willner received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. He was a Postdoctoral Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories (Crawford Hill) and a Member of Technical Staff at Bellcore. He is currently Professor of Electrical Engineering - Systems at the University of Southern California. He is the Associate Director for the USC Center for Photonics Technology and was an Associate Director for Student Affairs for the NSF Engineering Research Center in Multimedia. Prof. Willner has served on several scientific advisory boards for small companies.

Prof. Willner has received the following awards: the Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science & Engineering, the National Science Foundation National Young Investigator Award, the Fulbright Foundation Senior Scholar Lecturing and Research Fellowship, the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Lasers & Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) Distinguished Lecturer Award, the IEEE LEOS Distinguished Service Award, the USC Associates Award for University-Wide Excellence in Teaching, the USC/TRW Best Engineering Teacher Award, the USC/Northrop Outstanding Junior Engineering Faculty Research Award, the 2001 Eddy Paper Award from Pennwell Publications for the Best Contributed Technical Article (across all 30 magazines in Pennwell's Advanced Technology Division) and the Armstrong Foundation Memorial Prize for the highest-ranked EE graduate student at Columbia Univ. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Optical Society of America (OSA), and he was a Fellow of the Semiconductor Research Corp. Prof. Willner�s professional activities have included: President of the IEEE LEOS, Vice-President for Technical Affairs of the IEEE LEOS, Co-Chair of the Science and Engineering Council of the OSA, Chair of the IEEE TAB Ethics and Conflict Resolution Committee, Photonics Division Chair of the OSA, Elected Member of the Board of Governors for the IEEE LEOS, General and Program Co-Chair of the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), General and Program Chair of the IEEE LEOS Annual Meeting, Program Co-Chair of the OSA Annual Meeting, General and Program Co-Chair of the OSA Slow Light and OSA Optical Amplifier Topical Meetings, General Co-Chair of the IEEE LEOS Topical Meeting on Broadband Optical Networks, Steering Committee and Technical Committee Member of the Conference on Optical Fiber Communications (OFC), Technical Program Committee Member of the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC), and Chair of the Optical Communications and Optical Networks IEEE LEOS Technical Committees. He has chaired the IEEE LEOS Distinguished Traveling Lecturer Award Committee and has served on these other awards committees: OSA Frederic Ives Medal, LEOS Quantum Electronics Award, LEOS Wm. Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, and IEEE LEOS Fellow.

Prof. Willner's editorial positions have included: Editor-in-Chief of the Optics Letters, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT), Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) Series on Optical Networking, Guest Editor for the Joint Special Issue of JLT and JSAC on Multiple-Wavelength Technologies and Networks, Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics Focus Issue on Ultra-High-Bandwidth Optical Transmission Systems, and Guest Editor of the OSA Journal of Optical Networking Special Issue on OCDMA.

Prof. Willner has >700 publications, including 6 books. His research is in the area of optical fiber communication systems, wavelength-division multiplexing, optical signal processing, optical performance monitoring, optical amplification, optical networks, optical switching, and optical interconnections.