Established in 1952 and located in L’Aquila, Italy, the University of L’Aquila (UnivAQ) is a public teaching and research institution offering a full range of academic programs including biotechnologies, sciences, economics, engineering, education, humanities, medicine, psychology, and sport sciences. With 7 departments, UnivAQ offers their 19,000 enrolled students 68 degree courses, 9 research doctorate programs, specialization schools, specializing-master courses and vocational courses.

UnivAQ has a well-established research activity in the broad area of telecommunications, including radio communications as well as optical communications. Key to the present proposal is the Laboratory of Optics and Photonics, established within project INCIPICT (Innovating city planning through information and communication technologies) http://incipict.univaq.it/) in the process of reconstructing the city of L’Aquila after the devastating 2009 earthquake, which gives access to a unique fiber-optic test-bed for SDM and UWB transmission.

The group of optics and photonics focuses on the modeling of fiber-optic transmission systems, including quantum communications and QKD, the devising of novel transmission schemes, and various aspects of optical networking. The group of optics and photonics is also leading the National Laboratory of Advanced Optical Fibers for Photonics (FIBERS) of CNIT (National, Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications, www.cnit.it), which gathers together the Italian community involved in research on optical communications.

Members of UnivAQ research unit