Eric A Swanson
RLE Affilliate, Research Laboratory of Electronics
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Eric Swanson has been an affiliate of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT since 2004 and the MIT Deshpande Center for Technology Innovation since 2002. He also serves in a variety of other technical and managerial roles in academic, entrepreneurial, industrial, and nonprofit organizations. He is a member of the board of directors for Acacia Communications, NinePoint Medical, Curata, and SpectraWAVE.
Mr. Swanson is a co-founder or founding board member of five start-up companies: Advanced Ophthalmic Devices (acquired by Zeiss Meditec in 1994), Lightlab Imaging (acquired by Abbot in 2016), Sycamore Networks (Nasdaq IPO 1999), Acacia Communication (Nasdaq IPO in 2016), and Curata Incorporated (private). These companies have evolved over time and shipped many billions of dollars in products around the world.
Mr. Swanson has co-authored 79 journal articles, 183 conference presentations and lectures, 38 issued US patents, and 8 book chapters. In 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the OSA for “Pioneering contributions to the fields of intersatellite laser communication systems, fiber optic communication networks, and biomedical optical imaging.” In 2017 he was elected a Fellow of IEEE for “Contributions to optical coherence tomography and leadership in optical networking.” He is a co-recipient of the 2002 Rank Prize, the 2012 Champalimaud Vision Award, the 2017 Russ Prize, and the 2017 European Inventor Award.
Mr. Swanson holds a B.S. summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.