Confessions of an Entrepreneur: 30 Years of Photonics Start-ups Webinar
Every company – even the largest household names such as Google, Apple or Facebook - begins life as a start-up. Whilst he started his career as an academic, Simon Poole has been closely involved with a range of start-ups in both industry and academia over the past 30 years. Research groups include the Optical Fibre Technology Centre (OFTC) at Sydney University and the Australian Photonics CRC, whilst companies include Indx (sold to JDSUniphase in 1997) and Engana (sold to Optium Corporation in 2006 and now Finisar Australia). Exports of photonics components and subsystems from the companies founded by Dr Poole total nearly a billion dollars to date.
This presentation will look at how some of the companies with which Dr Poole has been involved or founded got started, what they did and how they subsequently developed and thrived. The presentation aims to inspire researchers who are considering how to commercialise their research to take the next steps and move out of the research lab and into the brave new world of commercialisation.
Instructor
Simon Poole
Dr Simon Poole is an engineer/entrepreneur with over 30 years experience in photonics in research, academia and industry. He has been involved in start-ups in both Academia and Industry for the majority of this time and is renowned both for his contribution to the technology of photonics as well as the companies he has founded.
After gaining a 1st Class Honours degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nottingham University in the UK 1979, Dr Poole worked as an electronic design engineer for several years then returned to University in 1981 to study for a PhD, this time at Southampton University. During his PhD work he developed the first techniques to manufacture and characterise rare-earth-doped fibers and was a member of the team that invented the Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier, one of the key enablers of current photonic communication systems. He was also fortunate to be involved in two of the earliest University spin-off companies, York Technology and York VSOP Ltd (now Fibercore Inc) which emerged from the research group at Southampton.
Publication Year: 2017
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