Inductees into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame 2010

Robert W. Tkach	Kenneth L. Walker	Michael Tompsett	Andrew R. Chraplyvy

Dr. Robert W. Tkach is Director of the Advanced Photonics Research department at Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, Crawford Hill Location. His research has involved dispersion management, optical amplification, optical networking, and high-speed DWDM transmission systems. Prior to rejoining Bell Laboratories in 2006, he has been: CTO of Celion Networks, Division Manager at AT&T Labs - Research, and a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He has been General Co-Chair of OFC, Vice-President of OIF, Associate Editor of the Journal of Lightwave Technology and on the IEEE LEOS Board of Governors. He received the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award from the R&D Council of New Jersey and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the IEEE, and AT&T. He received the 2008 John Tyndall Award and in 2009 he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and was awarded the 2009 Marconi Prize and Fellowship.

Dr. Kenneth L. Walker is Executive Vice President of Luna nanoWorks, a division of Luna Innovations. He was previously the head of Optical Fiber Research at Bell Labs where he had responsibility for optical fiber research, process development and scale-up. He also initiated and lead the development of Specialty Photonic Devices business in Lucent Technologies. Kenneth grew this group from a research concept to a multi-hundred million dollar business and played a key role in the divestiture of OFS from Lucent.

Kenneth was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2002, and was honored as an Optical Society of America fellow in 2003. He has a BS from CalTech and a MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. He holds over 50 patents.

Before moving to New Jersey from England, Dr Michael Tompsett developed an ultra-high-vacuum analytical system, used to study the growth of ultra-thin films. That technology is still used today in solid-state lasers and high-speed transistors. He also invented a thermal-imaging camera tube that has been deployed globally for military night-vision, fire-fighting and search-and-rescue. Another of his inventions is the basis for contemporary night-vision imagers.

At AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ from 1969 to 1989 Dr. Michael Tompsett designed and demonstrated the first image sensor known as a Charge Coupled Device (CCD). He alone has the first patent for CCD imaging. He led the development of the first linear and area charge coupled imaging devices, and the world?s first CCD color television cameras. (This invention and the development were cited for the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics). Dr Tompsett?s inventive acuity also let in the development of mobile phones, scanners and digital cameras. Ten years ago, Dr Tompsett started his own electronic medical records company, TheraManager LLC, in New Providence, NJ.

Dr. Andrew R. Chraplyvy received the B.S. degree in physics from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Cornell University. Since 1980, he has been with Bell Laboratories, where he currently is Optical Networks Research Vice President. Dr. Chraplyvy holds over 30 patents in the areas of lightwave systems and fiber optics He is a Bell Labs Fellow, Marconi Fellow, member of the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and Fellow of IEEE. He is the recipient of the 2009 Marconi Prize, 2003 John Tyndall Award, the 1999 Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, the 1999 New Jersey Inventor of the Year Award, the 1998 Lucent Technologies Patent Award, and the Bell Laboratories President?s Gold Award on four separate occasions.