José Azaña

Prof. José Azaña was born in Toledo, Spain. He received the Telecommunication Engineer degree (six years engineering program) and a Ph.D. (doctoral) degree in telecommunication engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain, in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He completed part of his PhD research at the University of Toronto, ON, Canada (1999) and the University of California, Davis, CA, USA (2000). From September 2001 to mid 2003 he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University Montreal, QC, Canada.

In 2003, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Centre Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications (INRS-EMT) in the Montreal region. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006 and to Full Professor in 2010. His research activities are focused on the areas of optics, photonics and microwave engineering.

Recipient of the 2008 Young Investigator Award from IEEE – Photonics Society (formerly LEOS), recognizing outstanding contributions to photonics (broadly defined) by an individual prior to his/her 35th birthday, “for pioneer contributions on innovative ultra-fast optical pulse processing techniques, including temporal self-imaging (Talbot) effects, using all-fiber grating technologies.”

Recipient of the 2009 IEEE Microwave Prize “awarded annually in recognition of the most significant published contribution to the field of interest of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society”, for the demonstration of ‘temporal imaging’ of ultra-wideband (UWB) microwave signals using an entirely electronic system.

Awarded with the “Extraordinary Prize to the Best Doctoral Thesis” from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), 2003.

Awarded with the XXII National Prize for the “Best Doctoral Thesis in Telecommunication Networks” from the Association of Telecommunication Engineers of Spain, 2002.

Guest editor of the special issue on “Signal Analysis Tools for Optical Signal Processing”, published by EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing (July 2005). Guest editor of the special issue on “Optical Signal Processing”, published by the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology (July 2006).

Recipient of five Strategic Project Grants (SPG), being Principal Investigator in three of these grants, from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). (2004 – 2010 competitions).

(Selected) Collaborations:

• Prof. Mohamed Chaker, Prof. Jean-Claude Kieffer, Prof. Roberto Morandotti, and Prof. Francois Légaré, INRS-EMT
• Prof. Jianping Yao, University of Ottawa
• Prof. Stewart Aitchinson, University of Toronto
• Prof. Sophie LaRochelle, Université Laval
• Prof. Lawrence R. Chen and Prof. David V. Plant, McGill University
• Prof. Raman Kashyap, Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal
• Dr. Greg Schinn, Exfo Inc. (Québec)
• Dr. Bill Tsounis, Apollo Microwaves Inc. (Montréal)
• Prof. Alejandro Carballar, Universidad de Sevilla, SpainProf. David J. Moss, University of Sydney, Australia
• Dr. Michael Strain and Prof. Marc Sorel, University of Glasgow, UK
• Dr. Luca Potì, CNIT – Pisa, Italy
• Prof. Leif Oxenlowe, Denmark Technical University
• Dr. Naum K. Berger and Prof. Baruch Fischer, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
• Dr. Radan Slavík, University of Southampton, UK

Prof. Azaña is a Researcher of the Canadian Institute for Photonics Innovation (CIPI), a Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He is also a member of 3 Strategic Networks funded by FQRNT (Gov. of Quebec), namely COPL, Plasma-Québec, and SytaCOM.

Prof. Azaña is a member of IEEE and OSA.