Dr Carlos García-Meca (M.Sc. Eng. in Communication Technologies, Systems, and Networks, PhD in Telecommunication, M.Sc. in Quantum Technologies) is the head of photonic and quantum engineering at Monodon by Navantia, where he is the technical leader of EDF project OPTIMAS.

García-Meca led the Transformational & Reconfigurable Photonics line at the Nanophotonics Technology Center from the Polytechnic University of Valencia from 2017 to 2019, being the PI of project PHUTURE. From 2020 to 2024, he was Chief Science Officer at DAS Photonics, where he was global PI of projects DISRUPT (EIC Pathfinder) and METASMART (ERDF-funded regional project), and DAS Photonics’ PI for projects TERAOPTICS (MSCA doctoral network), CUCO (national project on quantum computing), and INSPIRE (national project on integrated photonics).

His current research focuses on reconfigurable integrated photonics, optical communications, photonic signal processing and computing, metasurfaces, additive-manufactured smart materials, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. Research interests include the development of optical communication technologies for free-space and underwater environments, exploring the possibility of using laser systems by finding the right wavelengths and mitigating absorption and scattering effects in aquatic environments; and developing advanced signal processing and networking techniques for underwater optical communication systems by designing fast and robust communication protocols, modulation schemes, and error correction codes tailored for the challenging underwater environment.

García-Meca has supervised 2 PhD thesis and is currently supervising 3 more. He has ~50 articles in international journals (18 as first author; 3 invited papers) and ~50 international conferences, 1464 citations and an h-index of 19 (Google Scholar).