ABINGDON, United Kingdom, May 28, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) - Dr. Andrew Rickman, Chairman of fibre-optic component and subsystems manufacturer Bookham Technology plc (Nasdaq:BKHM), has won a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for his outstanding contribution to British engineering.
Dr Rickman (42), founded the company in 1988 to capitalise on the explosion in demand for bandwidth that he anticipated, well before the communication boom really took off. He realised that there was a yawning gap in the market for components that could combine computing power with controlling light signals and set about finding the technology to solve the problem. Working with top university researchers, Bookham came up with ASOC, a way of integrating processing and fibre-optic functions on a single silicon wafer. The key advance was a rib-waveguide that conducts light around the circuit -- and the beauty of using silicon is that it is the best-characterised engineering material on earth.
"Traditional fibre-optic networking components were bulky devices with lots of different parts to integrate optical, analogue and digital technologies," says Dr. Rickman. "We can achieve the same functionality in a single silicon chip and we can do it cheaper because we use the techniques that the semiconductor industry spent billions developing."
Dr. Rickman's vision is being borne out as copper wire is ripped out all over the world in favour of fibre-optic cable to fuel the insatiable demand for more bandwidth. Bookham Technology started making its revolutionary new chips in 1998 and now supplies many major communications providers, including Nortel, Lucent and Fujitsu. The company acquired Marconi's optical components business in February 2002 and now employs 850 people.
For more information from the Royal Academy of Engineering and photos, please contact:
Jane Sutton at the Royal Academy of Engineering tel: 020 7227 0536 (direct), mobile: 07989 513045, email: suttonj@raeng.co.uk
Notes for editors
Bookham Technology designs, manufactures and markets integrated multi-functional active and passive optical components using high volume production methods. Using patented silicon-based ASOC, Gallium Arsenide and Indium Phosphide technologies, the company provides end-to-end networking solutions that offer higher performance and greater systems capability to communications network system providers.
The company, whose securities are traded on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, is headquartered in the U.K., with offices and manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and U.K., and has additional offices in France, Italy, Japan and China. The company employs approximately 850 people worldwide.
More information on Bookham Technology is available at www.bookham.com
Bookham and ASOC are registered trademarks of Bookham Technology plc
The Royal Academy of Engineering's Silver Medals were instigated in 1995. They are awarded to engineers who have made outstanding contributions to British engineering. Candidates must be aged under 50. Up to four medals may be awarded each year.
The Royal Academy of Engineering aims to pursue, encourage and maintain excellence across the whole field of engineering in order to promote the advancement of the science, art and practice of engineering for the benefit of the public. The Academy comprises the UK's most eminent engineers and is able to use their combined wealth of knowledge and experience to meet its objectives.