Thomas Clark

Biography

Dr. Clark’s research interests include the development and characterization of low-noise and ultrafast lasers and photonic systems and devices, as well as the application of photonic technology to the development of advanced systems for communications, sensing and signal processing. His principal technology areas include millimeter wave and microwave photonic systems and photonic integrated circuits ... for microwave photonics with an emphasis on efficiently realizing agile, reconfigurable and multifunctional systems. Additional interests are creating enabling subsystems for emerging applications such as quantum computing and sensing, and autonomy and artificial intelligence. He has more than one hundred archival publications and has been awarded eleven patents to date in these and related technical areas.

Dr. Clark was previously a member of the Principal Professional Staff at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory from 2003 to 2024. During this time he was in the Air and Missile Defense Sector and served on the leadership team from 2012 to 2024 as the Program Area Manager for Advanced Concepts, the Supervisor of the Optics and Photonics Group and the Supervisor of the Microwave and Millimeter Wave Photonics Section. He has also worked in government, at the Naval Research Laboratory, and in the telecommunications industry at a start-up company prior to joining the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 2003.

Dr. Clark is a member of Optica and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is active in both the IEEE Photonics Society and the Microwave Theory and Technologies Society. He was the General Chair for the 2016 IEEE Photonics Conference, as well as the 2015 Member-at-Large and the 2014 Program Chair and has been the co-Chair of the IEEE Microwave Photonics Conference Technical Program Committee, was the 2010-2012 Chair of the IEEE Photonics Society Conference Technical Committee on Microwave Photonics and the 2011 Chair of the OSA Optical Fiber Communications Conference Technical Committee on Optical Processing and Analog Subsystems. He recently completed a three year term on the Board of Governors for the IEEE Photonics Society in 2024.