Polina Bayvel is an electrical engineer who has made major contributions to the investigation and design of high-bandwidth, multi-wavelength optical communication networks. Formerly a Royal Society University Research Fellow (1993-2003), her research has focused on maximising the speed and capacity of optical fibre transmission systems, and the fundamental studies of capacity-limiting optical nonlinearities and their mitigation. She heads the Optical Networks Group, a group she founded in 1994, as the first academic systems engineering group in optical communications & networks.
She was one of the first to show the feasibility of using the wavelength domain for routing in optical networks over a range of distance- and time-scales. She has established the applicability of these new optical network architecture concepts, which have been widely implemented in commercial systems and networks. These systems and networks underpin the Internet, and the digital communications infrastructure - and are essential for its growth.
Polina Bayvel is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2002), and a recipient of a number of awards. These include the 2002 Institute of Physics (IoP) Clifford Paterson Medal, 2013 IEEE Photonic Society Engineering Achievement Award, 2014 Royal Society Clifford Paterson Lecture & Medal, and 2015 Royal Academy of Engineering Colin Campbell Mitchell Award. She was awarded CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2017 New Year's Honours List, for services to engineering and in 2021 received the Thomas Young Medal of the Institute of Physics - the first woman to do so. She was also the first woman since 1800 to have received the Royal Society Rumford Medal in 2023. In 2024 she received the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Polina Bayvel is a dedicated supervisor dedicated to inspiring and developing the careers of younger researchers, most of whom are themselves academic and industrial leaders, developing next-generation communications & networks. She is also a vocal advocate for the importance and need for ubiquitous, secure, low-delay and high-capacity communications infrastructure to support the digital economy and new applications with the potential to transform people's lives. In 2024 she was awarded the Royal Society Research Professorship in 'Optical Networks – seeing through the cloud' to explore next-generation intelligent, adaptive and resilient optical networks.
Professional position
- Royal Society Research Professor and Professor of Optical Communications & Networks, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University College London (UCL)
- Head, Optical Networks Group, University College London (UCL)
Subject groups
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Engineering and Materials Science
Communications incl information theory, Engineering, electrical, Engineering, electronics, Opto-electronics (inc lasers, optical microscopy/imaging, fibre optic component)
Awards
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Clifford Paterson Medal and Lecture
For her fundamental research in high bandwidth digital communications and nonlinear optics.
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Rumford Medal
For pioneering contributions to the fundamental physics and nonlinear optics, enabling the realisation of high capacity, broad bandwidth, multi-wavelength, optical communication systems that have underpinned the information technology revolution.
