Rod C. Alferness was president of The Optical Society in 2008. Alferness is the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before that, Alferness was Chief Scientist, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent and the Bell Laboratories Research Senior Vice President. His previous position was the Bell Laboratories Optical Networking Research Senior Vice President. Alferness also was the Chief Technical Officer and Advanced Technology and Architecture Vice-President of the Optical Networking Group, Lucent Technologies. Prior to that role, he was head of the Photonics Networks Research Department of Lucent Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey.