BIO

Dr. Giovanni Milione is a PhD-scientist with 15+ years experience, spanning fundamental physics and industry, across multiple optics & photonics areas—structured light, communications, and sensing over free space and optical fibers. Among his recognitions are multiple President, CEO, and CTO-level awards from NEC Corp. and selection as Stony Brook University's 40 Under Forty. Giovanni has published 100+ publications and patents, which have been cited 5,300+ times. 

After completing a BS in Physics at Stony Brook University, Giovanni received his PhD in Physics at CUNY The City College of New York/Graduate Center (New York, NY) under Distinguished Professor Robert R. Alfano, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. For eleven years, during and after his PhD, Giovanni worked at NEC Laboratories America, Inc in the Optical Networking & Sensing Department (Princeton, NJ). 

Currently, Giovanni is Vice President at Sintela, Inc and leads AI, machine learning, data science, and the Autonomous Detection Group (Ann Arbor, MI). Sintela—the world leader in distributed fiber optic sensing—was recently awarded the largest distributed fiber optic sensing contract in history from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

Giovanni has also been heavily involved with Optica over the years, having served on the Editorial Advisory Committee of Optics & Photonics News, a chair for the Frontiers in Optics Conference, and currently Industry & Applications Development Chair on the Board of Meetings. 

Giovanni is also a US Army Veteran, having served in Operation Iraqi Freedom I.  

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Higher-Order Poincare Sphere (HOPS): Giovanni’s work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 053601 (2011)] was the first introduction of the HOPS. The HOPS is a unifying theoretical framework for structured light, encompassing both spin and orbital optical angular momentum and vector beams. The HOPE extends understanding far beyond the canonical Poincare sphere.

-Testament to its impact, it is exceptionally cited 1,081 times—among the top 0.79% (1,130th of 142,391) most cited of ALL Phys. Rev. Lett. publications EVER, and top 0.27% (117th of 43,500) since its publication.

-Today, the HOPS—a term now standard in the field—is THE canonical framework for structured light; it is adopted as a standard tool across every major field, from quantum information and communication to sensing, metasurfaces, photonic chips, and metrology, with 40+ appearances in Nature and Science journals.

Optical Communications with Structured Light: Giovanni was one of the pioneers who used structured light, e.g., vector beams and optical orbital angular momentum, for high-capacity optical communications.

-Giovanni’s work [Opt. Lett. 40(9) & 40(21), (2015)], pioneered the use of vector beams for free space communications, opening an entirely new line of research, exemplified by 536 and 458 citations, which are the 692nd and 1,038th of 288,119 (top 0.24% and 0.36%) most cited of ALL Optica publications EVER [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_polarization]

-Notably, [Opt. Lett. 40(9), 2015] was selected for Opt. Lett. 40th Anniversary: Editor’s Picks Collections: Optical Communications. Only 18 of 11,088 (0.16%) of ALL Opt. Lett. publications EVER were given this designation.

-Giovanni’s work [Sci. Rep. 5(1), (2015) & OFC 2014, paper M3K.6] pioneered use of optical orbital angular momentum for optical fiber communications NOT REQUIRING specialty fibers—exceptionally cited 413 times.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_angular_momentum_multiplexing].

-Giovanni’s work [Opt. Express 23(13), 2015] pioneered use of Hermite-Gaussian modes for communications over elliptical core fibers, obviating MIMO digital signal processing—exceptionally cited 206 times.

-In 2023, NEC and Google commercialized space division multiplexing (optical communication with structured light) for the first time over a submarine cable. 

Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS): Giovanni pioneered deep learning for DFOS, the impact of which today spans fundamental research, industry commercialization, and national security deployment.

-In 2015, while at NEC, Giovanni and Eric Cosatto pioneered deep learning for DFOS—when there were virtually no related publications or patents in the field—the industry’s first, starting an entirely new field; today, thousands of related papers and patents exist. This directly resulted in the first productization of deep learning + DFOS in the industry, and multi-million dollar new revenue for NEC. 

-A landmark of this work is [OFC 2019, post-deadline paper Th4C.7 & J. Light. Technology 37(16), (2019)], the first demonstration of DFOS over telecom networks. It is exceptionally cited—234 times—motivating a new line of research, credited with a ~10X growth of DFOS-related papers at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference, from several to ~80 papers in 2026.