Tetsuomi Sogawa
NTT Research has named Tetsuomi Sogawa director of its Physics & Informatics Lab, effective May 1, succeeding Yoshihisa Yamamoto, the Stanford emeritus professor who has led the lab since NTT Research launched in 2019. The Sunnyvale-based PHI Lab focuses on nonlinear optics and alternative computing architectures, part of NTT’s broader effort to push photonics deeper into computing and communications.
Sogawa brings a long NTT research résumé to the role. He joined NTT Basic Research Laboratories in 1991, served as a guest scientist at the Paul Drude Institute in Berlin from 1999 to 2000, worked in science-policy planning at Japan’s Cabinet Office from 2004 to 2006, later led NTT Basic Research Laboratories, and has headed NTT’s Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group since June 2018.
He also remains a visiting professor in functional nanodevices at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science and serves as program director of Japan’s SIP3 quantum program, a national initiative aimed at moving advanced quantum technologies toward practical use.
In a 2020 NTT Technical Review article, Sogawa and coauthors described IOWN and its All-Photonics Network as a route to ultralow-latency, ultralow-power information processing centered on photonics. NTT Research has since linked that photonics push to rising AI compute and energy demands. The researchers highlighted thin-film lithium niobate and related technologies as possible building blocks for more efficient computing hardware.
Sogawa was named a JSAP Fellow in 2016 for research on controlling photonic and spin-related properties in semiconductor quantum structures using surface acoustic waves
