| Professor Ford's expertise is in transparent fiber optic and free-space optical communication networks, dynamic planar and volume holography, physical and geometrical optics, and opto-electronic device packaging. He has been an innovator in the application of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) to the optical telecommunications infrastructure. For six years at Bell Labs, Ford developed parallel communications systems based on arrays of high speed opto-electronic VLSI and micromechanical devices. He led a team that demonstrated the first MEMS-based components for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) telecommunications, including a fast variable attenuator, a dynamic spectral equalizer that corrects power variances across the individual wavelengths of a WDM transmission, and a low-loss wavelength add/drop switch. These type of components have become part of the fiber-optic "plumbing" that compose the international communications network.
In his Photonics Systems Integration Lab (PSI-Lab) at UCSD, Ford's research group is working on using both fiber-optic and free-space optical technologies to solve problems in data access, mobile computing, sensors and communication networks. Recent work has emphasized micro-imagers (the 'origami' telephoto lens) and compact intensity concentrators for solar energy. |