Science thomsonreuters.com

From an early age I had an active interest in surrounding events and acquiring knowledge that related to those events — a path that quickly lead me to science which, in turn, took me around the world to pursue and develop my research.

Since 1996, this research has been in photonics, specializing in optical amplifiers and lasers, which has earned me various international recognition awards.

It was in 1996 that I joined a pioneer photonics research centre at the University of Malaya, supported by Telekom Malaysia, to perform research on optical fibre amplifiers. The amplifier is the key enabling device to ensure that signal power is adequate for data transmission as light is absorbed in the optical fibre during transmission.

This, in turn, led to my working in Genoa with Marconi SpA developing local amplifiers, and ultimately a spell of two years working in the US, researching and developing variable gain optical amplifiers. These high-end optical amplifiers can adapt to any transmission conditions. They make it possible to change the gain and amplify multiple signals simultaneously. During that time this technology was in high demand with telecommunication companies because the environments they operated in had constantly changing conditions. We responded to this by developing an intelligent optical amplifier which adjusts itself to whatever gain is required. This proved to be a major breakthrough as the only amplifiers available at that time were custom made versus our universally compatible version.

I returned to Malaysia in 2003 and since then have continued to work on improving optical amplifiers by making a reflective amplifier capable of extending transmission distance.

The ongoing growth of data traffic for broadband communications applications and communications continues to drive the need for greater bandwidth capacity in optical fibre transmissions.

I am now conducting research into fibre lasers for multi wavelength transmission systems.

Recently, non-linear based multi-wavelength fibre lasers have attracted huge interest from scientists around the globe. We want to try to have a fibre laser that can produce multiple wavelengths simultaneously.

I estimate that we are 3-4 years away from achieving the requirements needed to develop the research to such a point that it can become available to the mass market. We need the ongoing support and creativity of the industry to support and help us develop this research to enable the development of applications in the mass market.

In addition to telecommunications, fibre lasers also have military and biomedical applications, specifically in nonlinear microscopy enabling high resolution images of nanoscale objects.

I would describe myself as a "heavy user" of Web of Science. Why? Because, for me, it makes it easy to find relevant articles relating to my topic including those in which I have been cited. This has enabled me to find and contact other researchers who have cited my work, which provides me with additional opportunities and potential to find research collaborators.