Christopher R. Cole

Christopher R. Cole

Hugh G. Larsen

Lorraine Marshall Wright

J. Nelson Wright

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hris has extensive management and technical experience in the development of complex electronic systems, in senior leadership and key contributor roles. His technical areas of focus are system architectures, signal processing, and integrated circuits for computing, communication and imaging products. Christopher R. Cole photo

Chris is an Advisor to Coherent/II-VI, Hyperlight, Eridu AI, Quintessent, Lucidean, Avicena, and Ayar Labs on emerging optics technologies, such as new datacom WDM specification by the CW-WDM MSA which he chairs, and Optical PCIe.

Previously he was Vice President, Systems Engineering, at an ML start-up investigating optical computing. Prior, he was Vice President, Advanced Development, Finisar Corp. (acquired by Coherent/II-VI) where he architected and led the development of 40, 50, 100, 200 and 400 Gb/s Ethernet optical transceivers for Cloud Data Centers (DCs), and Carrier Central Offices (COs), leading to over $1 billion of Finisar and billions of optics industry revenue. These are used in high speed optical links in every Cloud and large Enterprise DC, and Carrier CO.

10, 40, 50, 100, 200, and 400G optics development details

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Chris is an IEEE Fellow, elected in 2017 for "contributions to 10, 40, and 100G Optical Ethernet and OTN interfaces," and an OPTICA Fellow (formerly Optical Society of America), elected in 2021 for "pioneering contributions to architectures, specifications, standardization, and product development of 10, 40, 100, 200 and 400G optical interfaces.” He was Technical and General Chair of OFC 2021 and 2023, respectively, the premier global communication and networking conference and exhibition. He has over 300 articles, presentations, lectures and patents in the areas of optics, communications, signal processing, integrated circuits, and ultrasound.

Prior to Finisar and its acquisition BBN , Chris consulted full time with the Parallax Group on medical and mobile technology.

Before that, Chris was with Acuson Corp. as a key contributor to and senior manager of system architecture, signal processing, and circuit design of the Sequoia coherent imaging ultrasound platform. The Sequoia products dramatically improved patient care, accounted for $5 billion in revenue, and lead to the acquisition of Acuson by Siemens Ultrasound .

Chris received B.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . At Hughes Aircraft Company SCG (now Boeing Space,) and then M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory he contributed to multiple military communication satellites, including Fltsat EHF Package and Milstar. He then developed voiceband datacom algorithms for TI DSP Group, and ASICs for Silicon Systems Inc. (now Analog Devices).

He can be contacted at LinkedIn or at crcole@parallaxgroup.com.