Ken-ichi Sato received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from the University of Tokyo, in 1976, 1978, and 1986, respectively. He is a Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, an NTT R&D Fellow, and currently with Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Before joining the Nagoya University in April 2004, he was an Executive Manager of the Photonic Transport Network Laboratory at NTT. He has been a leading researcher in the field of telecommunications; his most significant achievements lie in two of the important transport network technology developments. One is ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) network technology, which includes the invention of the Virtual Path concept. The other is photonic network technology, which includes the invention of the optical path concept and various networking and system technologies. His R&D activities cover transport network architectures, network design, photonic network systems including optical cross-connect/ADM and photonic IP routers, and optical transmission technologies. He has authored/co-authored more than 550 research publications in international journals and conferences. He holds 50 granted patents and more than 100 pending patents. His contributions to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and optical network technology development extend to coediting the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (four special issues) and the Journal of Lightwave Technology (three special issues); organizing several workshops and conference technical sessions; serving on numerous committees of international conferences including OFC 2016 General Chair and OFC 2014 Program Chair; authoring a book, Advances in Transport Network Technologies (Artech House, 1996); and coauthoring 17 other books. Prof. Sato is a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan and a Fellow of the IEEE. He served as the president of the IEICE during 2016-2017. He received the Young Engineer Award in 1984, the Excellent Paper Award in 1991 and 2020, the Achievement Award in 2000, and the Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award in 2011 from the IEICE of Japan, and the Best Paper Awards in 2007 and 2008 from the IEICE Communications Society. He was also the recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in 2002, and the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from Japan’s Cabinet Office in 2014.