Jon Beckman is the Director of Business Operations for VIAVI Solution’s Fiber and Access Solutions business. He has over 20-years of experience in the telecommunications industry and has held leadership roles in product management, marketing, business development and operations. Jon holds a B.S. in Engineering from the United States Naval Academy. Serving as Chair of the FOSA Technology Outreach Committee, Jon has actively contributed to FOSA’s efforts to increase industry awareness of and appreciation for distributed fiber sensing technology.

Nilson Gabela, Global Market and Technology Development Manager for Outside Plant Cable, has been with Corning for 20 years and spent time in the Engineering Services, Sales and Market Development. Nilson started his carrier in engineering services as a Field Engineering working in domestic and international projects. From Engineering Services Nilson moved to Enterprise Sales. While in sales, Nilson had domestic and international roles as well. He was a sales engineer for several territories, including New Orleans, Miami and the Caribbean. He also managed Corning’s Latin America sales team. In Market and Technology Development, Gabela has navigated his way in and out of international data centers, both Hyperscale, Enterprise and Carrier customers. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a MBA.

Steven Koles is currently the President & CEO of Hifi, a fiber optic sensing technology company (partly owned by Enbridge, Cenovus, and BDC). Hifi possesses over 80 patents on specialized fiber optic technology, and AI / machine learning based software algorithms, designed for preventative pipeline leak detection. Prior to Hifi, Steven was with Steeper Energy, President & CEO of Hemisphere GPS, VP & GM at AOL (Time Warner) Canada, Senior VP at Group Telecom as well as several management positions at TELUS Corporation. Steven is a graduate from the Faculty of Business at the University of Alberta, as well as the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business. Steven has also received his ICD designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors.

Amanda Hetzel has built a distinguished career in the fiber optics industry, beginning in Marketing Communications at Siecor, now Corning Optical Communications. Since 2007, she has been a key member of Network Integrity Systems (NIS), where her expertise in marketing communications has been instrumental in advancing the adoption of fiber optic sensing technologies. Her efforts have contributed significantly to securing critical network infrastructure for government, military, and other sectors. In 2018, Amanda expanded her impact at NIS by taking on the role of Director of Business Operations, further strengthening the company’s mission and initiatives. Amanda’s commitment to leadership extends beyond her professional achievements. She has served on several boards of directors, including in roles such as President. Her work with on the K-64 Board of Directors at Catawba Valley Community College highlights her dedication to workforce development through collaboration with education, business, and government leaders. Amanda’s involvement on the boards of various arts organizations, including the United Arts Council has enhanced her skills in strategic planning, financial oversight, and governance, as well as her ability to foster community growth. Amanda holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She resides with her husband and is the proud mother of two young adults pursing their college educations.

Dr. Paul Dickinson is the Director of Business Development at Dura-Line. A telecom industry veteran of over 33 years, he began his career as an AT&T Bell Labs materials research scientist developing new optical fiber cable material formulations before moving on to a variety of different positions within Lucent Technologies and OFS. His prior experience includes leadership roles in R&D management, optical systems engineering, technology transfer & scale-up, marketing, and sales. Ten years ago, Paul joined Dura-Line to develop and execute on innovative new business development including strategic planning and solution development of fiber optic sensing solutions in a wide variety of vertical markets. Paul earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Cornell University and Ph.D. in polymer science from the University of Connecticut’s Institute of Materials Science.

Kevin Boone, Business Director at FEBUS Optics and COO of FEBUS Inc (US entity of FEBUS Optics), has more than 13 years’ experience in fiber-optic sensing with a focus in the upstream oil and gas market. Kevin joined FEBUS Optics in 2023. He previously worked for OptaSense starting in 2012 as an engineer in data analytics, processing, and interpretation and progressed into a product manager role responsible for designing, developing, and managing fiber-optic sensing products and services. Kevin holds a degree in Chemical Engineering with focus in Nuclear Engineering, along with a diploma in Technology Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of New Brunswick.

Dr. David Z. Chen joined Go!Foton in Jan, 2018 as a Chief Technology Officer. David is a veteran of Verizon Communication Inc. His experience stretched from Computer Server Farm/Data-Center IT-manager, Verizon Corporate Advanced Technology Fellow, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff supporting the technology development/advancement of ULH, Metro and Access, and Verizon Passive Optical Component/System quality control manager. David has published many records breaking ULH field trial papers, and he has been granted over 200 USA patents in his career. At Verizon, he led the industry into the new Ultra-Bend-Insensitive fiber (G.657-B3) invention, improved new Dry-Filler based OSP cables, perfected Air-Jetted-Cable deployment for densely populated cities, contributed MDU drop to In-Living-Unit fiber cable design and related optical termination products. Jointly, David has been working with Telcordia and other industry leading optical fiber/system vendors in the multiple Telcordia GR based quality control/testing/standard documentation revisions. He also contributed to the industry on Space-Division-Multiplex technology development with multiple patents granted, another important granted patent was Quantum Key Communication in the early 2000. At Go!Foton, David led the engineering group invented PEACOC, NEMO based modern optical patch panel (high density without the impact on accessing the terminations), completed family products for ISP and OSP and field deployment. Recently his solo invention and now heading to production is the Triple Duality of DAS/P-OTDR/OPM fiber sensing equipment. David has applied the quantum entanglement principle to design the Duality of DAS using optical pulse entanglement theory. David holds a BS degree in precision mechanics and optical instrument from Shanghai Science and Technology University, two Master and a Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Physics with the focus on Quantum/Nonlinear Optics, Modern Chaos theory, and computational analysis for quantum stability and Higgs Boson from University of Texas at Dallas.

Kyle Glaeser is the Director of Emerging Networks at Underline. He started his career as a network design engineer working on projects for Google Fiber, AT&T, Verizon, and FTTH builds around the world. To make FTTH builds more efficient he implemented GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. He created programs to use LiDAR collection data and autodesign tools to accurately analyze a market’s cost before construction. Through this work, Kyle took an interest in information infrastructure as the basis of smart city technologies, developing network architectures that are custom tailored to communities’ infrastructure needs. The last five years he has been focused on creating technology and fiber architectures that will allow for new revenue streams in smart city applications, such as fiber optic sensing.

After earning a degree in physics, Sergey joined EOSS in 2016 as an International Business Development Manager in Milan, Italy. Over the past eight years, Sergey has contributed to the development of EOSS from a corporate startup into a major player in the fiber optic monitoring market. Sergey has been involved in many projects ranging from temperature monitoring of medium voltage power lines to acoustic monitoring of intercontinental cable systems. In July 2024, Sergey relocated to the United States to lead the development of EOSS’s North American division. Sergey also serves as a member of the Board of Power Delivery Intelligence Initiative (PDi2).

Dr. Martin Strohbach is the Director Software Solutions & AI R&D at AP Sensing and has more than 18 years of professional experience in developing AI and data driven IoT products in various industries. At AP Sensing he is leading the development of DFOS software solutions for applications such as monitoring power cables, pipelines, rails, perimeters and more. With his teams, Martin has a strong focus on applying latest trends in machine and deep learning algorithms. His expertise lies in smart management of high-volume sensor data, knowledge graphs and creating efficient infrastructures for machine learning that cover the whole MLOps lifecycle. Before AP Sensing Martin lead teams in a deep tech startup for several years developing AI products, enabling technologies and data infrastructures in domains such as industrial monitoring, smart cities and entertainment. Martin invented several patents and has published scientific articles in major conferences and journals. He also has been involved in activities related to standardization of ETSI NGSI-LD. Martin holds a PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University, UK and a MSc in Computing from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany.

Global Commercial Director for the Solutions Group at Luna Innovations Inc, JJ has been involved in more than 350 distributed fiber optic sensing projects around the world over the last 17 years. He started his career at the defense technology firm QinetiQ in the UK and was part of the founding team of OptaSense in 2007, which is the world’s largest supplier of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) systems. Since being acquired by Luna in 2020, JJ’s team combines multiple fiber optic sensing brands and technologies under one roof, providing monitoring solutions into large infrastructure projects globally. He is based in Florida and has a Bachelor of Science from the Cass Business School in London. JJ was proud to serve as FOSA Chairman in 2019.

Dr. Alasdair Murray is the Technical Authority at Luna Innovations. He began his career in 2014 at the UK Defence Technology company QinetiQ where he worked in the Acoustic Stealth Materials group before moving over to the Luna subsidiary OptaSense in 2018. His current role sees Alasdair working across the distributed fiber sensing business developing and guiding what can be done with different fiber sensing technologies. Key areas that Alasdair is involved in include Rail, Traffic and Infrastructure monitoring, and Pipeline Leak Detection. Alasdair holds a master’s degree in physics from the University of Exeter and a PhD in Acoustic Metamaterials with the Electromagnetic and Acoustic Materials from the same institution.