Frederick J. Leonberger

Fred Leonberger is an industry-leading technologist in photonics and fiber optics. He served on Lightwave Logic’s Board of Directors for eight years until December 2024.

Fred is best known as one of the pioneers of the integrated optical modulator technology that has been used for 20+ years to encode data at multi-Gb/s rates in long-haul fiber optic networks, aka the Internet superhighways. He is Principal of EOvation Advisors LLC, a private technology and business advisory firm, and has been a member of the boards of ten photonics companies. He is a retired senior vice president and chief technology officer of JDS Uniphase Corp., (now Lumentum), where from 1995 until 2003, he played a lead role in technology strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property activities.

In 1992, Fred co-founded and became general manager of United Technologies Photonics. He joined United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) in 1984 as manager of Photonics and Applied Physics. In his early career with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, he and his team developed a breakthrough analog-to- digital converter device incorporating micron-scale guided-wave modulator integration on a single chip.

Fred was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000. He has received several industry awards, and was honored with the 2014 Connecticut Medal of Technology for his accomplishments, primarily in the area of electro-optic devices. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Fred holds a PhD in electrical engineering from MIT.