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Professor Djafar Mynbaev Named 2006 Scholar on Campus
Dr. Djafar K. Mynbaev, an internationally recognized expert on fiber-optic communications, has been chosen as New York City College of Technology's 2006 Scholar on Campus and will deliver his Scholar on Campus lecture, “Telecommunications: The Revolution is Now,” on Monday, April 10, 2006, at 5 p.m. in the Atrium Amphitheater.
Dr. Mynbaev, a professor of electrical engineering and telecommunications technology, will discuss “how the evolving telecommunications industry will radically change the way we live -- both at home and in the workplace,” examining the technological phenomenon of “convergence” that is creating previously unattainable channels of communication.
According to Dr. Mynbaev, the telecommunications industry’s recent downturn is not a “death knell,” but simply “the demise of the old way to communicate, the way when voice was the main form of delivering information and the telephone was king.” Today, says Dr. Mynbaev, “As voice, data and video technologies join into a single stream of telecommunications traffic, we are seeing the convergence of information and communication technologies into a sole physical layer of modern networks, and, finally, a series of complex networks merging into a single, open multi-service network.”
Dr. Mynbaev describes this projected 21st-century network as “user-centric.” It will use Internet Protocol as the means of information delivery, and will deliver all types of information services to each user, regardless of location or the devices operated by the user.
Over the last 15 years, optical communications -- based on the use of fiber-optic technology -- has become the major means of transmitting information. Currently, more than 98 percent of telecommunications traffic is delivered by optical fiber. “Every time we pick up the phone, turn on the TV, or turn on the computer, the signal goes through optical fiber,” Dr. Mynbaev says.
Today, major telecommunications companies are hastening to locate the necessary fiber optic cables as close to the user as possible. “This so-called ‘fiber-to-the-premises’ undertaking, which aims to bring the optical fiber directly to the user’s home or office, is the current focus in the world of optical communications,” he notes.
However, there is a difference between Internet transmission and the way optical communications technology delivers information. The telecommunications industry is in the process of resolving this problem, a “revolutionary” step, according to Dr. Mynbaev, which will expand its technology far beyond its present bounds.
Eventually, all types of communication would complement one another. "We have a tremendous capacity we don’t use yet, around the country and under the ocean, where so many cables have been laid that the fish have almost no space left,” he jokes.
Although current U.S. cell phone service isn’t as advanced as in some European countries, says Dr. Mynbaev, ultimately, people will be able to watch television shows or listen to concerts over a cell phone or other mobile gadget. “With the new technologies, you will feel like you’re in the concert hall,” he says. People will converse with others around the world on in-home monitor screens, seeing one another in 3-D.
“We’d talk just like we were sitting in the same room, face to face. It’s not a futuristic view; companies are doing it every day with videoconferencing,” Dr. Mynbaev explains. That capability would be a big advance over today’s videophone, which offers poor quality and a “very restricted” picture. And technically, it is possible for any number of people to talk and see one another at the same time.
A Fair Lawn, NJ, resident, Dr. Mynbaev grew up in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad in the former Soviet Union) and received his electrical engineering degrees and doctorate at what is now called St. Petersburg Electro-Technical University. He then spent more than 20 years in navigation systems research and development for Soviet industrial, research and academic institutions, pioneering a laser gyroscope-based navigation system and acquiring a Russian patent for a fiber-optic gyroscope. In 1987, he was awarded the USSR state medal for “Distinguished Work.”
When Dr. Mynbaev came to the U.S. in 1991, such work was classified and thus required American citizenship, which he did not have. (He was later granted permanent residency as “an individual with extraordinary ability in the sciences.”) Dr. Mynbaev worked in broadband access networks research, on digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, at Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies), and taught electrical engineering courses at New York Institute of Technology and physics at Fordham University.
Joining the City Tech faculty in 1994, he was assigned to teach not only basic electrical engineering, but also a senior opto-electronics course -- unusual for an adjunct -- and became more involved with fiber optics. “My field is a marriage of physics and telecommunications,” Dr. Mynbaev elaborates, “so I had to learn a lot of new things, and I completely redesigned the courses.”
He continues to redesign and update courses, applying the results of his optical communications research, telecommunications consulting work, collaborations with industry and at least $300,000 in federal, state and city grants to improve technology in City Tech’s general electronics laboratory and obtain equipment for telecommunications courses and fiber optics work. He has been a Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (a National Science Foundation-funded initiative) mentor and is a PSC/CUNY grant recipient.
A prolific writer who currently holds 26 patents, Dr. Mynbaev has published more than 100 papers, and his book (with Lowell L. Scheiner), Fiber-Optic Communications Technology (Prentice Hall, 2001), continues to be translated and reprinted for distribution in North Asia, India and China -- the most rapidly growing optical communication markets. A member of technical committees at a number of international professional organizations, he has been invited to lecture and mentor research activities at universities in China and Russia.
Dr. Mynbaev regularly delivers tutorials at international conferences, and has given presentations at international and national conferences sponsored by such professional societies as the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, Optical Society of America, The International Society for Optical Engineering, American Society for Engineering Education and the International Association of Science and Technology for Development, and regional societies.
His latest tutorial appears in the IEEE Communications Society’s online series, “Tutorials Now.” He also serves as a reviewer for professional journals such as Optical Networks, Journal of Lightwave Technology, IEEE Communications Magazine and Optical Engineering.
One not-too-distant technological development Dr. Mynbaev is happily anticipating is the ability to send a video feed of his talks to family members who still live in St. Petersburg. "It will be nice to be able to communicate with them in such an immediate, personal way,” he says.
4/4/06
