Marcus Weldon (born 25 July 1968) was the 13th President of

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

. He also served as the Corporate Chief Technology Officer of

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

Education

Weldon won a scholarship (bursary) to the

Bedford Modern School Bedford Modern School (often called BMS) is a Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference independent school in Bedford, England. The school has its origins in Bedford Charity, The Harpur Trust, born from the financial endowment, endowments le ...

, which he attended until the age of 18, excelling in mathematics and the sciences before enrolling at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

to study Chemistry and Computer Science. He graduated with First Class honours in 1990, and was accepted to the Ph.D. program at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied Physical Chemistry and performed research into the growth of diamond films on metallic surfaces with

Cynthia FriendCynthia Friend is president and chief operating officer of Kavli Foundation (United States), The Kavli Foundation. She is on leave from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. Friend was the first female full profes ...

. He was awarded the Nottingham Prize for his thesis work.

Career

In 1995, he accepted a post doctoral position at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, working in the group of Yves Chabal, in the Physical Sciences research laboratory, headed by Horst Stormer. He studied the surface oxidation of silicon and the science of wafer bonding and splitting by hydrogen implantation, winning multiple awards for his work. He was offered a position as a Member of Technical Staff in the Materials Research laboratory run by Alastair Glass, working for Mark Cardillo to study the microscopic physics and chemistry of sol-gel. After the spin-out of

Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...

from AT&T, and the sale of the optical fiber business to

Commscope CommScope is an American network infrastructure provider based in Hickory, North Carolina. CommScope employs over 30,000 employees. The company joined the NASDAQ stock exchange on October 25, 2013. CommScope designs and manufactures network infr ...

, he changed focus to investigate early

Fiber To The Home Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber opt ...

technologies and architectures. This led to his subsequent appointment as Chief Technology Officer of the Broadband Solutions business unit of Lucent Technologies in 2004, and with one area of focus being broadband economics and quality of service. After the merger between Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies in 2006, he became the CTO of the Broadband Access business unit of the combined entity, before becoming the Corporate CTO for

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...

in 2009. He assumed the role of CTO for

following its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent in 2016. In 2013, after the departure of

Jeong Kim Jeong Hun Kim ( ko, 김종훈; born August 13, 1960) is a South Korean-born American academic, businessman, and entrepreneur in the technology industry. In 2004, Kim was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions t ...

, he became the 13th President of Bell Labs, in addition to his continued role as CTO of Alcatel-Lucent. During his roles as CTO and Bell Labs President he has engaged in numerous industry leadership activities such as the FCC's Open Internet Advisory Committee and the launch of the European Union's Partnership for 5G Wireless Research. He has focused on the rejuvenation of Bell Labs and a return to its pre-eminence by the invention of foundational networking technologies and systems for the ‘cloud networking’ era, via 10x game-changing research and so-called ‘FutureX’ projects. In 2014 under his tenure the Bell Labs Prize was inaugurated to encourage external innovators to collaborate with Bell Labs’ researchers. Weldon was named as one of Global Telecoms Business Power 100 in 2014, and one of Global Telecoms Business 50 CTOs to watch in 2015. In November 2016 he was awarded the New Jersey Medal for Science and Technology for his technology vision and leadership. In April 2016, he relaunched the series of collaborations between Bell Labs scientists and artists known as

Experiments in Art and Technology Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit and tax-exempt organization, was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and e ...

, using the concept of a

Human Digital Orchestra Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit and tax-exempt organization, was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and e ...

as an expression of the strong interplay between the artistic and the digital-network domains that allows the audience to interact with, and modify, artistic performances and installations. The new E.A.T initiative has on-going collaborations with the digital music artist

Beatie Wolfe Beatie Wolfe is an Anglo-American award-winning, multimedia artist and musician described as a "musical weirdo and visionary" known for seeing music differently and creating new formats for music and art in the digital era. These projects inclu ...

, exploring the interplay of digital and physical, as well as a partnership with

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sc ...

's incubator, New Inc., named EXPLOR after the pioneering work of computer artist

Lillian Schwartz Lillian F. Schwartz (born 1927) is an American artist considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art and one of the first artists notable for basing almost her entire oeuvre on computational media. Many of her ground-breaking projects were done in t ...

and Bell Labs software engineer,

Ken Knowlton Kenneth Charles Knowlton (June 6, 1931 – June 16, 2022) was an American computer graphics pioneer, artist, mosaicist and portraitist. In 1963, while working at Bell Labs, he developed the BEFLIX programming language for creating bitmap comput ...

. In November 2020, he announced his intent to step down as the President of Bell Labs at the end of March 2021, and likened the transition to the 'regeneration' of Doctors in

Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...

Personal life

He is married to Cherie Weldon (née Macauley) and has five children. He resides in

Summit, New Jersey Summit is a city in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is located on a ridge in northern- central New Jersey, within the Raritan Valley and Rahway Valley regions in the New York metropolitan area. At the 2010 United Sta ...

.Marcus Weldon
, bell-labs.com, retrieved 20 Feb 2015.

Books

* M.K. Weldon and Bell Labs Research, CTO, and Consulting Staff, ''The Future X Network: A Bell Labs Perspective.'' CRC Press, 2015.

References

External links

Official biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weldon, Marcus Scientists at Bell Labs Living people 1968 births People educated at Bedford Modern School Alumni of King's College London Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni