Professor Paul Townsend has more than 25 years’ experience as a scientist and research leader in both industry and academia. He has worked in leading international industrial research laboratories including Bell Communications Research (USA), British Telecom (UK) and Corning (UK), and he is currently Head of the Photonics Centre at the Tyndall National Institute and Professor of Photonic Systems Research in the School of Physics at University College Cork in Ireland. He is also Director of the national Research Ireland Centre for Photonics, IPIC, and Co-Director of the UK-Ireland Centre for Doctoral Training in Photonic Integration and Data Storage, PIADS. The Photonics Centre at Tyndall comprises nine internationally recognised groups (around 170 staff and PhD students in total) carrying out research and commercialisation activities spanning the areas of semiconductor materials and devices, photonic integration and packaging, through to advanced photonic systems for communications and healthcare. Paul also leads the Photonic Systems Group at Tyndall, which has the mission to develop the next generation of optical fibre communications and sensing technology with higher speed, reach, capacity, or scalability, and lower energy consumption. He is widely recognised as one of the originators of practical quantum cryptography, and for his team’s work on high speed and capacity fibre to the home networks. He holds a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.