Katsunari Okamoto was the recipient of the IEEE/LEOS Distinguished Lecturer Award in July 1977. Born in Hiroshima, Japan, on October 19, 1949, he received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1972, 1974, and 1977, respectively.He joined Ibaraki Electrical Communication Laboratory, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Ibaraki, Japan, in 1977, and was engaged in the research on transmission characteristics of multimode, dispersion-flattened single-mode, single-polarization (PANDA) fibers, and fiber-optic components. As for the dispersion-flattened fibers (DSF), he first proposed the idea and confirmed experimentally.From September 1982 to September 1983, he joined Optical fiber Group, Southampton University, Southampton, England, where he was engaged in the research on birefringent (Bow-tie) optical fibers.Since October 1988, he has been working on the analysis and synthesis of the guided wave devices, the computer-aided-design (CAD) and fabrication of the silica-based planer lightwave circuits at Ibaraki R&D Center, NTT Opto-electronics Laboratories. He has developed 126ch-25GHz spacing AWGs, flat spectral response AWGs and integrated-optic add/drop multiplexers.He is presently a research fellow at the Okamoto Research Laboratory in NTT Photonics Laboratories. He has served as a LEOS Distinguished Lecturer (‘97-’98). He has also served as one of the Topical Editors for IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (’96 and ’99). He has been a program committee member of LEOS Annual Meeting (’97 and ’99) and Topical Meeting (’97 and ’99). He is currently an International Liaison of OFC for Asia/Pacific Rim region (‘98~). He published more than 100 papers and authored or co-authored 8 books.Dr. Okamoto is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Optical Society of America, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication engineers of Japan and the
