Introduction to Prof. Bao

Prof. Xiaoyi Bao is a professor at the Department of Physics, University of Ottawa. She serves as a Fellow of Academy Science, Royal Society of Canada and is a Research Chair in Fiber Optics and Photonics (Tier 1) in Canada. She has received numerous prestigious awards and medals for her excellent contributions, including Premier’s Research Excellence Awards in 2001, Ontario Distinguish Researcher Award in 2002, and NCE (National Centers of Excellence) CHAIRS’ Award Medal in 2006. She has also received the CAP-INO Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Applied Photonics from the Canadian Association of Physics in 2010, and the CAP Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Industrial and Applied Physics in 2013. She recently received her honorary doctor degree from the University of Lethbridge in 2015. She also served as topical editors for several journals such as Optics Letters and Applied Optics. Prof. Bao has co-authored over 450 refereed journals and conference proceedings, 9 book chapters, and has been granted several patents, many of which have been transferred to companies leading to products on the market.

Prof. Bao is an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of nonlinear fiber optics. She has made outstanding contributions and remarkable technological advances in a number of areas; notably in the monitoring of polarization mode dispersion of field fibers and their impact on high speed communication networks. In addition, she has led the field in the development of distributed sensors to monitor the health of civil infrastructures. These technological advances have been embraced by the industry and several technology transfers to US, Japanese and Canadian companies, and have led to products on the market.

Her research interests are:

• Fiber sensors for temperature, strain, pressure, refractive index, vibration, acoustic and chemical, bio-sensing
• Using nonlinear optical effects (self-phase modulation, cross-phase modulation, four wave mixing, and stimulated scattering) in fibers to design sensors, instrumentation, lasers, and devices.
• Quantum optics based lasers, devices, random number generators
• Design and fabrication of specialty fibers, micro and nano fibers
• Micro and nano fiber based devices, instrumentation for sensors, optical signal processing system, and lasers
• Ultra narrow linewidth, tunable and frequency stabilized random fiber lasers
• Development of ultrahigh resolution optical spectrum analyzer