AiDi Corp., a global company that specializes in passive optical network (PON) products and services, has announced today that Katsunari Okamoto has joined its executive management team as chief technology officer. Most recently, Okamoto served as president of Okamoto Laboratory, an R&D consulting company specializing in planar lightwave circuits and as a research professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Davis. Okamoto brings with him over 30 years of experience in the field of fiber optics, including 26 years at NTT where he served as director of Okamoto Research Laboratory in NTT Photonics Laboratories. During his time at NTT, he engaged in research and development of the transmission characteristics of various fibers including PANDA fibers, fiber optic components, AWGs, integrated optic add/drop multiplexers and proposed the idea of dispersion-flattened fibers (DFF). He is a research fellow of NTT Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group and has also taught and performed research at Southampton University and the University of Tokyo with D.N. Payne and E.A.J. Marcatili, professor from AT&T Bell Laboratories. Okamoto has published more than 260 papers in technical journals and international conferences. He has also authored and co-authored 8 books, including "Fundamentals of Optical Waveguides."