The Nebula Award, a prestigious recognition, is bestowed upon teams of employees who have achieved remarkable feats through their unwavering dedication and perseverance. This esteemed award is a testament to the exceptional efforts of teams that have demonstrated outstanding performance on a specific project or task.
Each team, including our student employees, is being rewarded with a cash bonus. This is our heartfelt way of expressing gratitude for their exceptional efforts that have surpassed their day-to-day responsibilities. The Nebula Award serves as a beacon, illuminating the value we place on collaboration and teamwork at the lab.
Congratulations to our award recipients!
Winter 2026: The PON Team
The PON team has completed an outstanding year of achievement, distinguished by the remarkable scope and depth of the work they have produced. The team undertook several critical projects, among them the development of advanced PON interoperability automation and substantial contributions to the successful BBF PON plugfest in October 2025. These accomplishments have meaningfully strengthened the IOL’s capabilities and reflect the team’s strong technical leadership.
Their year is highlighted by completing all requirements for the UNH IOL to officially offer BBF.247 PON Certification testing services. This effort required mastering new testing tools, resolving early system challenges, incorporating the new certification test into our databasing and reporting systems, and developing an HTML report parser that proved essential during the BBF.247 lab alignment testing phase. Their work was formally recognized by the Broadband Forum’s testing and certification oversight committee in December 2025. Brett Dupont, Will Gawron, Galven Rivera, and AJ Tisbert have earned this award through their exceptional work.
Previous Recipients
2025
- LaaS: Justin Choquette, Matthew Gee, Kidan Nelson, Adam Hassick
- DTS Team, Open Source Group: Dean Marx, Nick Pratt
2024
- The PCB Team: John Moss, Donovan Menick , Shane Kurland , Tim Chartier
- The DPDK Team: Jeremy Spewock, Manit Mahajan, Adam Hassick, and Cody Cheng
2023
- Datacenter NVMe OCP Team: Dilan Patel and Ronan Marino
- NVMe FDP Team: Mitchell Tilton, Timofei Nikshych, Hasan Polat, Michael Crawley