Books read in 2021: Part 2

In Part II, two more industry figures pick their reads of the year: Sara Gabba of II-VI and Ciena’s Joe Marsella.

Sara Gabba, Strategic Marketing, II-VI

I’ve always read a lot. I cannot fall asleep without the sweet or the exciting company of a good book!

In the last year, I’ve spent many evenings reading fairy tales to my young daughter and, on top of the traditional ones from Andersen or the Grimm brothers, I’ve surprisingly discovered that she really likes the Greek myths (in an adaptation for children), which are the archetypes of most of the ‘modern’ tales. Love, mystery, jealousy, fear, talent, heroism: all the instincts and passions of humankind are there and able to capture every reader.

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Books read in 2021: Part 1

Each year Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their reads of the year. Paul Brooks and Maxim Kuschnerov kick off this year's recommended reads. 

Dr. Paul Brooks, Optical Transport Director, VIAVI Solutions

Having spent a very happy time serving in the Royal Navy, I am always reading about all things connected with its history.

As a young midshipman, I managed to sleep through many of the history lessons at BRNC Dartmouth so I am using my spare time to catch up on the lessons I missed all those years ago.

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Books 2020: Part III

Gazettabyte asked industry figures to pick their reads during last year. In the final post - Part III - Alexis Bjorlin and Don Clarke choose theirs.

Alexis Bjorlin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Optical Systems Division, Broadcom

In 1996, during my first semester as a graduate student in Santa Barbara, I both lost myself and found companionship in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s epic saga, One Hundred Years of Solitude. This work of magical realism has become my comparand against which all other works of fiction are measured.

In 2020, I revisited the town of Macondo and the Buendia family, and discovered a whole new world, offering striking comparisons to our current history, replete with juxtaposed conservative and progressive narratives, luring me into a suspension of disbelief to enjoy the richness of the family and their century-long story unfolding.

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Books 2020: Part II

Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their reads of the year. In Part II, Maxim Kuschnerov, Professor Roel Baets and Yves LeMaître share their favourites.

 

Maxim Kuschnerov, Director of the Optical & Quantum Communications Laboratory, Huawei

Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Physic is Different by Philip Ball is one of my favourite books about physics. It offers an intuitive and math-free view on the beauty of quantum mechanics, which, in its approach, is almost philosophical.

As the author states, one of the problems that people have with the inherent unpredictability of quantum effects is the lack of analogies from real life that would make quantum phenomena relatable.

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Books in 2020

Each year Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their reads of the year. Industry analysts and regular contributors Dana Cooperson and Andrew Schmitt kick off this year's highlighted books.

Dana Cooperson, independent analyst

I had difficulty concentrating enough to read during the lockdown despite having more time. Eventually, events spurred my overdue fiction/ non-fiction exploration of the underpinnings of systemic racism as well as some escapism through journeys that the pandemic made impossible.

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AI: “It is an astonishing time to be a technologist.”

Want to master artificial intelligence (AI) techniques? A new book, The Supervised Learning Workshop, teaches you how to create machine-learning models using the Python programming language. A conversation with the co-author, Blaine Bateman.

Blaine Bateman is a business strategy consultant, helping companies identify growth strategies and opportunities.

Several years ago he decided to focus on data analysis or, more accurately, predictive analytics using machine learning.

“I started to see that clients had lots of data, frequently they didn’t know anything about it and they weren’t using it,” he says. “At the same time, I started to see that AI and machine learning were really on the uptick.”

Machine learning work is also rewarding, he says: “You build stuff and when you get it to work, you do something that helps someone.”

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Silicon photonics webinar

Daryl Inniss and I assess how the technology and marketplace has changed since we published our silicon photonics book at the end of 2016. Click here to view the webinar. Ours is the first of a series of webinars that COBO, the Consortium of On-Board Optics, is hosting.

And here is a copy of the slides, click here.