Leadership – FOSA
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Leadership

Management Committee – Board Members

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Dr. Paul Dickinson, Dura-Line, Chairman

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.

Jon Beckman, VIAVI Solutions, Vice Chair

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.
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Steven Koles, Hifi, Treasurer

Steven 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.

Nilson Gabela, Corning, Secretary

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.

Board Members

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Dave Cunningham, Network Integrity Systems

Dave Cunningham is the Vice President of Marketing for Network Integrity Systems. He has more than 25 years of experience in the optical fiber and electronics industry, including working as Tellabs’ Director of Global Marketing and Corning. Dave holds four US Patents on various fiber-related inventions.

Heather Dunn, OFS

Heather Dunn is the General Manager of the OFS facility in Avon, CT, which develops and manufactures specialty optical fiber, cable, and assemblies. Industry experience prior to joining OFS includes semiconductor test equipment design and manufacturing, aerospace composite materials research and development, and medical device development and manufacturing. Functional roles have included R&D, project management, engineering management, operations management, technology development, and technical sales. She holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and an M.S. in the same field from MIT.

Kyle Glaeser, Underline

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.
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Dr. Wieland Hill, AP Sensing

Dr. Wieland Hill has been active in the DFOS industry for over 15 years. He has extensive experience in the industrial development of lasers, micro-optics and instruments for fibre-optic sensing, notably with Lambda Physik, LIMO, JENOPTIK, LIOS Technology and AP Sensing. His current activities as Director of Instruments R&D at AP Sensing include distributed temperature, strain and acoustic sensing. Wieland has published about 100 scientific papers and is the inventor of about 30 patent families. He served as FOSA Technology Committee Chair in 2021. He is also involved in IEC and SEAFOM activities on DFOS standards and recommendations.

JJ Williams, Luna Innovations

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.
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Gary Bolton, Fiber Broadband Association

Gary Bolton serves as president and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association – the largest trade association in the Americas dedicated to all-fiber-optic broadband. With more than three decades in the telecom industry, Bolton joined the Fiber Broadband Association as president and CEO in 2020 after serving on the association’s board as vice chairman, treasurer and vice chairs of public policy and marketing committees. Prior to taking the leadership role at the Fiber Broadband Association, Gary spent 11 years at ADTRAN serving as vice president of global marketing and government affairs. Gary is currently an adjunct professor in business administration and management science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and he holds an MBA from Duke University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.

Jimmy Todd, Fiber Broadband Association

Jimmy Todd has more than 35 years of technology and communications industry knowledge and experience. As the CEO & General Manager for Nex-Tech, he strategically leads growth, innovation, and diversity. Nex-Tech is a rural cooperative communications and technology company, based in Lenora, Kansas, and was the first company in the nation to bring FTTH technology to a rural telecom exchange. Today, Nex-Tech’s broadband service area is primarily fiber-optic covering over 11,000 square miles across Northwest and Central Kansas. As a highly diversified organization, Nex-Tech has grown to offer technology solutions and business services utilizing a highly-certified Data Center infrastructure and a state-of-the-art Network Operations Center including hands-on and on-site technical support, across the United States, as well as internationally. For many years, Jimmy has been actively engaged in supporting advocacy for fiber broadband at the State and National levels serving as a Board/Committee member and holding leadership positions for Kansas Fiber Network, WTA, NTCA, NRTC, FBA and USTelecom.

 

 

 

 

Committee Chairs

FOSA Technology Committee Chair - Dr. Alasdair Murray, Luna Innovations

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.
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FOSA Technology Outreach Committee Co-Chair - Gayla Arrindel, Corning

A 25-year leader with an excellent mix of international and corporate level sales, marketing and business development experience in the Telecommunications Industry. A graduate of the University of Texas in Austin with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a Six Sigma Black Belt. Gayla previously led 3M Communication Markets Division (CMD) Business Units for Wireline, Wireless and Structured Cabling. Since the acquisition of 3M CMD by Corning Optical Communications in June 2018, Gayla has joined the Corning In Building Networks team as a Market Development Director. She represents Corning on the TIA Smart Building working group, is Vice Chair of The Association of Passive Optical LAN (APOLAN) and most recently, 2023 Secretary for the Fiber Optic Sensing Association. Gayla is a strong industry advocate for future ready, sustainable fiber optic solutions that enable smarter network technologies.

FOSA Technology Outreach Committee Chair - Kyle Gaeser, Underline

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. Using his background in GIS, Kyle created scripts and models to drive efficiencies into network designs, shaving millions of dollars off large builds. He began implementing GIS based innovations into the design, construction, and financing of large FTTH builds. After seeing a number of projects explode past their projected budgets, he created a program 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. Upon learning about the emerging open access market and software defined networking, he became passionate about developing specific network use cases and architectures that would propel the open access model forward as the network of the future. Kyle also serves on the FOSA Board of Directors.

FOSA Public Policy Commitee Chair - JJ Williams, Luna Innovations

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.