Varghese Antony Thomas

Varghese Antony Thomas is an Adjunct Professor of Practice with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. He currently serves as a Senior DSP Engineer at Ciena Corporation while maintaining his academic role. His research focuses on photonics design, wireless systems, digital signal processing, and optical network optimization. He holds a B.Eng. (Honors) from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (2010), an M.Sc. in Wireless Communications from the University of Southampton (2011) on a Commonwealth Scholarship, and a Ph.D. in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from the University of Southampton (2015), supported by the Mayflower Scholarship. His doctoral thesis, titled 'RF over Fiber for Optical/Wireless Integration,' laid groundwork for his later work in optical communication systems.

Dr. Thomas has published extensively in photonics and communications journals/conferences, with notable contributions to Radio over Fiber (RoF), VCSEL-based systems, and machine learning-driven signal processing. He holds two patents and has received awards including Georgia Tech’s Research Faculty Teaching Fellow (2022) and a 2nd Best Poster Award at the IEEE Photonics Conference (2018). His work bridges academic research with industrial applications, emphasizing practical solutions for high-speed optical networks and advanced DSP techniques.

His research interests span optical fiber integration, photonic device modeling, and innovative approaches to mitigate signal impairments in high-rate communication systems. Recent work explores ultra-compact photonic components and AI-driven performance monitoring in commercial optical transceivers. He collaborates actively across academia and industry to advance next-generation optical communication technologies.