Palle Jeppesen (M’69) was
born in 1941 in Vordingborg, Denmark. He is an electrical
engineer (MSc in electrophysics), graduated from the Technical
University of Denmark (DTU), January 1967. In addition he
received the Lic. techn. (PhD) degree in microwave
solid state devices in 1970 and the Dr. techn. (DSc) degree
in microwave solid state devices in 1978 from
this University.
In 1967 he was a licentiate (PhD) student at Electromagnetics
Institute (EMI), Technical University of Denmark. From 1968 to
1969, he continued his PhD study as Research Associate at Cornell
University , Ithaca, NY, and from 1969 to 1970 as Project
Engineer at Cayuga Associates, Ithaca, NY ; at both places he did
research in the field of GaAs Gunn effect microwave oscillators.
In 1970 he completed his PhD study at EMI. He continued at this
Institute as Assistant Professor from 1970 to 1972 and Associate
Professor from 1972 to 1984. In 1974 he changed subject from
microwave electronics to optical communication. In 1984 he was
appointed Research Professor for 1984 to1989 as one of the first
ten Research Professors in Denmark . He has been a Full Professor
since 1984. At EMI, he was Head of Optogroup from 1974 to1988 and
Head of Center for Broadband Telecommunications from 1988 to
1998. From 1982 to 1984, he also worked as part time Manager of
R&D at NKT Elektronik, now Draka Denmark Optical Cable, OFS
Fitel Denmark and Tellabs Denmark . From 1998 to 2008 he was Head
of Systems Competence Area at Research Center COM. Since 2008 he
has been EU project Adviser at DTU Fotonik (formerly Research
Center COM).
From 1995 to 1998, he coordinated the participation of Technical
University of Denmark in the EU ACTS project METON (METropolitan
Optical Network) and he followed his co-workers contributions to
the four EU IST projects METEOR (MEtropolitan TErabit Optical
Ring), STOLAS (Switching Technologies for Optically Labeled
Signals), TOPRATE (Terabit/s Optical Transmission Systems based
on Ultra-High Channel Bitrate) and LASAGNE
(All-optical Label
Swapping Employing Optical Logic Gates in Network Nodes).
He has been Chairman of the Danish Defense Research Council,
member of NATO Research and Technology Board and NATO Science
Committee. He has also been a member of the Danish Technical
Research Council, the boards of TERMA Elektronik,
Kryolitselskabet Øresund, Telecom Danmark and DELTA (Danish
Electronics, Light & Acoustics) and the Scientific Council
for the Danish National Encyclopedia. He has served many times at
the technical program committees for the American conferences
Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) and Conference on
Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) and for the European Conference
on Optical Communication (ECOC). He was Conference Chairman for
ECOC 1981 and again for ECOC 2002, both in Copenhagen . He has
been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Virtual
Photonics Incorporated (VPI) 1997 to 2002. He has been a member
of the Board for the Gold Medal Fund for Alexander Foss, G.A.
Hagemann and Julius Thomsen since 2003. He has also been Chairman
of the peer review panel PE7 Systems and Communication
Engineering under the European Research Council since 2009, and
has been a member of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences
since 1978.
His current research interests are optical signal processing,
optical multi-level modulation formats and 640-5000 Gbit/s
optical communication.
He has received P. Gorm Petersens Memorial Stipend in 1974, the
Esso Prize in 1978, prize from Reinholdt W. Jorck og Hustrus Fond
in 1987, the Villum Kann Rasmussen Prize in 1988, the Alexander
Foss Gold Medal in 2005 and he was appointed a Knight of the
Dannebrogorden in 2009.
He has educated more than 80 Ph.D.s. He has also been a member of
numerous evaluation committees at Technical University of Denmark
and in other countries - in 2002, 2007 and 2008 Stiftelsen för
Strategisk Forskning, in 2003 and 2004 Vetenskapsrådet and
Chalmers Tekniska Högskolan in Sweden .