Stephen B. Alexander

Steve Alexander is currently Ciena’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. He has held a number of positions since joining the Company in 1994, including General Manager of Ciena's Transport & Switching and Data Networking business units, Vice President of Transport Products and Director of Lightwave Systems.

From 1982 until joining Ciena, he was employed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he last held the position of Assistant Leader of the Optical Communications Technology Group. He is an IEEE Fellow and is a recipient of the IEEE Communications Society Industrial Innovation Award. He is a member of the Board of Governors of 5G Americas and a member of the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Telecom Industry Solutions (ATIS). He has been an Associate Editor for both the IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications & Networking (JOCN) and the Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT) and has served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission Technological Advisory Council (TAC-4) and as a commissioner in the TechAmerica Cloud First, Cloud Fast Initiative. He was General Chair of the conference on Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) in 1997.

Mr. Alexander received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been granted 23 patents and has authored a text on Optical Communication Receiver Design as well as numerous conference presentations and journal articles.