Ton Koonen received the M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in electrical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology. In 1979 he started working as a member of technical staff doing applied research in fibre-optic communication systems in Philips Communication Industry, which merged with AT&T in 1984. In 1987, he became the technical manager of an applied research group on broadband telecommunication systems at Bell Laboratories in Lucent Technologies. He also was a part-time Professor at Twente University from 1991 to 2000. He is a Full Professor at TU/e and Chairman of the Electro-optical Communication Systems Group at the COBRA Institute.
His current research interests include broadband fiber access and in-building networks, radio-over-fiber networks, and optical packet-switched networks. He has initiated and led several European and national R&D projects in this area on dynamically reconfigurable hybrid fiber access networks, fiber-wireless, packet-switched access, and short-range multimode (polymer) optical fiber networks, and label-controlled optical packet routed networks. Currently, he is involved in a number of access/in-home projects in the Freeband program, the IOP GenCom program, and the EC FP6 IST and FP7 ICT programs. He authored and co-authored more than 250 conference and journal publications.
Prof. Koonen is a Bell Laboratories Fellow since 1998, an IEEE Fellow since 2007, and an elected member of the IEEE LEOS Board of Governors since 2007.