Page History

David F. Welch co-founded Infinera , a leading supplier of optical systems
based on innovative photonic integrated circuit technology. He
served as CTO, CMO, CSO, and EVP before his appointment as President
in June 2013and currently serves as President and as a member of the Board of Directors. Previously, he was CTO and VP Corporate Development at
SDL. Dr. Welch holds over 130 patents and has published more than 250
articles. His awards include the 1992 Adolph Lomb Award from OSA, the
1998 Engineering Achievement Award from LEOS, the 1999 OSA Joseph
Fraunhofer/Robert M. Burley Award, the 2011 OSA John Tyndall Award,
and more than 17 product of-the-year awards at SDL, and the 2013 IET J
J in optical transmission technologies, and has authored over 300 technical publications in the same field. In recognition of his technical contributions to the optical industry, he has been awarded the Optical Society of America’s Adolph Lomb Medal, Joseph Fraunhofer Award and John Tyndall Award, and the UK-based Institution of Engineering and Technology’s JJ Thompson Medal for Achievement in Electronics. He is a fellow Fellow of IEEE
and of OSAthe OSA and the IEEE. In 20102011, he Dr. Welch founded Students Matter, whose mission is to
pursue a national non-profit organization dedicated to sponsoring impact litigation to improve promote access to a quality education for all
K-12 studentspublic education. Its first case, the groundbreaking education equality lawsuit Vergara v. California, is a constitutional challenge to several California statutes governing the processes around teacher tenure, dismissal, and seniority-based layoffs, in its final ruling they found in favor of the plaintiffs and declaring all five statutes unconstitutional. The case is currently under appeal. He holds B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

169 Java Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408 572-5200
dwelch@infinera.com