Hi there ! Welcome to this website. My name is Thomas Ako, I am a photonics engineer and tech enthusiast. In my day job, I am a (technical) business developer. I help fabless semiconductor companies build more robust and reliable ICs.
In addition to all this technical stuff, I am happily married and father to two wonderful boys. We live just outside Ghent in the northern part of Belgium.
You can learn more by checking my LinkedIn profile.
What to Expect from this Website
This website is all about proper storytelling for photonics. Photonics can be quite complex as a technology. At the same time, it is very useful and its applications are almost always multidisciplinary. Photonics companies (most of whom are still start-ups) need to tell their story.
This frequently involves making the technical information of your product or service more accessible to a diverse audience. I also endeavour to provide resources useful for practicing photonics engineers and hobbyists alike.
My Background in Photonics
My initial background at the bachelor’s level is in physics. My first encounter with photonics as a discipline was in 2007. Back then, I was figuring out my options for further studies. There were two main options – theoretical physics or photonics.
I was fortunate enough to be awarded scholarships for both; theoretical physics in Italy at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and photonics in Belgium and Sweden through the Erasmus Mundus Master in Photonics. After a lot of thought, I chose photonics and the rest as they say is history.
The masters in photonics equipped me with the tools I needed for starting a career in the field. For my master’s thesis, I chose to work on the area of transformation optics and meta-materials. I focused on designing invisibility cloaks with openings.
Following the master in 2010, I decided to embark on a PhD. This time I switched focus and worked on integrating liquid crystal display technology with silicon photonics for telecom and life science applications.
You can find more information on publications from my time as a researcher on the Ghent University website library.