In this talk, I will overview two areas of my research at NEC Labs America, Inc.: 1. Structured light 2. Optical fiber sensing. I will discuss light beams that have spatially inhomogeneous state of polarization, including their description on a so called higher-order Poincare sphere, an associated Pancharatnam-Berry phase, and their applications in optical communication and sensing. I will also discuss how exploiting Rayleigh, Raman, and Brillouin backscattering in optical fibers in combination with machine learning can enable distributed optical fiber sensing over existing telecommunication infrastructure.

Bio: Dr. Giovanni Milione is a Senior Researcher/Business Incubation Lead in the Optical Networking & Sensing Department at NEC Labs America, Inc. in Princeton, NJ. He received his B.S., M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Physics from Stony Brook University and CUNY Graduate Center/The City College of New York, where he was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He is currently Topic Chair for Optica/APS FiO+LS Conference, the Industry & Applications Development Chair on Optica’s Board of Meetings, and served on the Editorial Advisory Committee of Optica’s Optics & Photonics News. His recent recognitions include Stony Brook University’s 40 Under Forty. Giovanni is also a U.S. military veteran, having served in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars.