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December 14, 2001
NIT Distinguished Lecture
Science and Technology for Future Communications Networks
Dr. Cherry A. Murray
Physical Sciences Research Senior Vice President
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
Abstract
We live in an era of astounding technological transformation - the Information Revolution - that is as profound as the two great technological revolutions of the past - the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. All around us are now-familiar communication technologies whose very existence would have seemed extraordinary just a generation ago, such as cellular telephones, the optical fiber telecommunications backbone, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Bell Labs Research has a 75 year history of innovation in communications technology as well as science. I will describe some of the current Bell Labs research in future communications networks including all optical longhaul networks, 4th generation ultra-broadband wireless data networks, and science in support of networks even farther in the future.
Biography
Cherry Murray is currently Physical Sciences Research Sr. Vice President, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. Before that she served as Director of the Physical Research Laboratory from June 1997 - March 2000, and Department Head of three departments in the same Lab, the Low Temperature and Solid State Research Department from 1987-1990, the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department from 1990-1993, and the Semiconductor Physics Research Department from 1993- June 1997. She was hired into Bell Labs as a member of technical staff in 1978, after receiving a Ph.D in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also obtained a B.S. in physics in 1973. Cherry became a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 1985. She has numerous publications and two patents.
The Physical Sciences Research Division has approximately 200 researchers in fundamental physics, biophysics, neurobiology, chemistry and material science, as well as applied physics, chemistry and materials, high speed electronics, microelectro mechanical devices and subsystems for optical networks and wireless systems research, leading to inventions and innovations for future communications and microelectronics technologies of importance to Lucent Technologies. A recent accomplishment of her Division has been the invention and development of the optical fabric for the first all-optical crossconnect for telecommunications networks, Lucent's Wavestar LambdaRouter.
Cherry has a broad background in experimental research in low temperature, surface, condensed matter and complex fluid physics, with emphasis on light scattering and imaging. Her own research program currently encompasses imaging of order-disorder transitions in colloidal crystals and self-assembly of optical materials. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Art and Sciences. Cherry is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Chemical Society, the Optical Society of America, the Materials Research Society, and Sigma Xi. She won the APS Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award in 1989. She sits on numerous advisory committees for universities. She has over the years held several positions in divisions of the American Physical Society: the executive councils of the Forum on Education and the Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics, on various prize and fellowship committees and as a member of the Panel of Public Affairs. She is current a General Councillor of the American Physical Society, and is the Chair of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Commission on the Dynamics of Matter. For the National Research Council, she serves on the Board of Physics and Astronomy, and the National Nanotechnology Initiative Review Committee. She is also a member of the University of Chicago Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory and the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee for the Department of Energy.
 The lecture attracted students, faculty, and industry representatives. |
 Dr. Cherry Murray presenting her lecture on Science and Technology for Future Communications Networks. |
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 Dr. Murray heads off to the airport amidst a snow storm. From left to right: UT President Robert Birgeneau; Cherry Murray, Bell Labs.; Peter Smith, NIT Director; Ted Sargent, NIT Research Thrust Leader and Associate. |
