PASADENA, CA, - Sept. 2, 2014 - Rockley Photonics, a start-up focused on advanced silicon photonic-based solutions for next-generation data communication networks, today announced it has added significant new managerial/technical talent to its engineering and product development team in Pasadena, CA.

 

Thomas Schrans, Nathan Farrington, and Guomin Yu bring a wealth of experience to the Rockley Photonics team to enhance its capabilities in the design/development of high-speed integrated photonic solutions, along with the system-level implementation and deployment knowledge required for modern datacom architectures.

 

Dr. Schrans will lead Rockley Photonics’ product development engineering team as the Director of Product Development.  He brings over 20 years of experience in commercial fiber optic and photonic devices. Previously, Dr. Schrans was co-founder and Vice President of Technology and Advanced Product Development at Kaiam Corporation, a private company commercializing multi-wavelength high-speed fiber optic transceivers. Before that he was at Santur Corporation where he managed the development of the pioneering 10x10Gb/s C form-factor pluggable (CFP) for 100Gb/s Ethernet.

 

Aaron Zilkie, VP of Engineering commented, “Thomas’ leadership experience in fiber-optic subsystems and high-speed photonic integration is well aligned with our product development needs.”

 

Dr. Farrington has joined the company as the Director of Software and System Architecture, where he leads the software and systems engineering team and the design of next-generation data center networking solutions.  Previously, Nathan was the founder and CEO of Packetcounter, a computer network software and services company.  Prior to that he was a data center network engineer at Facebook.

 

Zilkie added, “Nathan’s preeminent network system knowledge and control expertise will be highly useful as we expand the deployment and functionality of optical communication solutions within the datacom network infrastructure.”

 

Mr. Yu is serving as Rockley Photonics’ Director of High-Speed Devices.  He has had leading engineering roles at start-up companies Packet Photonics and Gigoptix and he has more than 24 years of experience in the design, fabrication and testing of photonics components including lasers, photodetectors, waveguide devices and optical modulators.

 

Zilkie explained, “Guomin’s tremendous high-speed device capabilities round out the engineering team’s multi-discipline approach to system-level optical integration.

 

“We are very pleased to have Thomas, Nathan and Guomin join our team as we foster a shared vision of the growth opportunities for lower-cost and lower-power high-speed integrated photonic elements throughout next generation datacom networks,” concluded Dr Andrew Rickman, CEO, Rockley Photonics.

 

“The experience base they bring is noteworthy and exciting from both the technical and market perspectives.”