Gary Nicholl is a Distinguished Engineer in Cisco’s Optics and Optical Systems Group, with a focus on optical interconnect technology and strategy. Gary is currently the Physical and Link Layer Working Group – Management Co-Vice Chair in the OIF, responsible for the development of the Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS), which is widely used throughout the industry for next generation pluggable optical modules. Gary also serves as Architecture and Logic Track chair and lead logic editor for the IEEE 802.3dj project (800Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s Ethernet) and is an IEEE Senior Member. During his more than 40 years in the telecommunications industry, Gary has held a wide range of hardware development and system architecture roles in both optical transmission and data switching products. Gary holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manchester (UK).