Coherent appointed Dr. Young-Kai (Y.K.) Chen as Deputy Chief Technology Officer (DCTO), reporting to CTO Dr. Julie Sheridan Eng.
Prior to being named DCTO, Dr. Chen was Chief Scientist in Coherent’s New Ventures and Wide-Bandgap Electronics Technologies group. Before joining Coherent in 2021, he was a program manager at DARPA, where he initiated and managed programs in advanced semiconductor electronics, secured communications, and artificial intelligence and machine learning processing. Dr. Chen was previously a senior director at Nokia Bell Labs, responsible for advanced research and technology development in high-speed electronics and optoelectronics including integrated lasers, silicon photonics, coherent optical data links, and wireless backhaul transceivers.
Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in Electrical Engineering. He is a Fellow of Bell Labs, IEEE, and Optica (OSA); a member of the National Academy of Engineering; and recipient of the prestigious IEEE David Sarnoff Award and the Edison Patent Award. He has authored or co-authored three book chapters and over 190 journal articles, and holds 33 U.S. patents.
