James Whiteaway graduated from Queen's College, Cambridge, in 1973 and joined Standard Telecommunications Laboratories (now Nortel) at Harlow, UK, to work on laser diodes. He gained his PhD from Cambridge University in 1983 for his published work on semiconductor lasers. He is now the External Research Co-ordinator for the Nortel Optical Communications Programme Unit and leads a team researching optical device modelling. He has accomplished pioneering work on phase-shifted DFBs which have set the industry standards for performance of distributed feedback laser devices.
