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Goodbye and good luck, Boris
5 October 2020
With his thesis handed in, Boris Karanov recently departed the Optical Networks Group to join the Technical University of Eindhoven as a post-doctoral researcher. Here, he reflects on his time as a member of ONG and offers some wise words for new PhD students.
You’ve been a member of ONG since 2016. What are going to miss the most?
I will miss every ONG member that I met in these four years. ONG is my second home and everyone made me feel part of the group from the very beginning. It has been a wonderful period of my life.
What have been your most rewarding and challenging moments over the last four years?
Completing a PhD is a challenging task for everyone. My research programme was associated with industrial secondments at Bell Labs and it was really challenging to find the balance between academic and industrial environments. In addition, it involved changing countries every year… Nevertheless, this really helped me shape the course of my PhD and I am very happy with the way things happened.
Any advice for new members coming into ONG?
From my first day, I was surrounded by senior members of the group and they took it upon themselves to help me settle in London and kick-start my PhD life and research in the best possible way. ONG is a uniquely assembled set of people and my advice for new members, especially PhD students, is to really use the opportunity to benefit not only from the vast research expertise in the group, but also from the warm and friendly environment.
Boris received his PhD training as part of the COIN project (Coding for Optical communications In the Nonlinear regime), funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie-Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No.676448.
Boris is currently awaiting his viva – best of luck from all at ONG for a successful examination!
Photo caption: Boris presenting at 'Optical Networks - the next 25 years?' - a two-day workshop held in honour of the ONG's 25th anniversary (which was sponsored by the EPSRC TRANSNET Programme).