Simon Poole

Simon Poole, of New Business Ventures, Finisar Ltd Australia, is an engineer and an entrepreneur who recently received the Charles Todd Medal - the most prestigious award made by the Australian telecommunications industry - for helping to solve the 'tyranny of distance' problem for that country. He was on the team that developed the Erbium-doped fiber amplifier. Without this device the internet couldn't work - it amplifies signals traveling through fiber optic cables which would otherwise die out within 100km. Simon Poole is in Auckland to speak at 'Ideas & Execution: The Yin and Yang of Innovation' organised by the Dodd Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies.