Sophie LaRochelle, Eng. Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is also Director of the Centre d'optique, photonique et lasers (COPL) strategic cluster and its associated research center at Université Laval. Since 2001, Ms. LaRochelle has held a Canada Research Chair examining the design of optical fibers and photonic devices, and their applications to optical communications systems. Her current research focuses on silicon integrated photonic circuits, optical fibers for mode-division multiplexed transmissions, and next-generation optical fiber amplifiers. Over the years, she has contributed to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of photo-embedded Bragg filters in optical fibers, multi-frequency fiber lasers, all-optical signal processing, analog optical transmissions or using frequency encoding for code division multiplexing. She regularly leads collaborative and partnership research projects with Quebec, Canadian and international companies and researchers.