"In the area of optical communications and networks, major research and development efforts are focused towards extending the flexibility and efficiency of optical networks; the main driver is to better adapt to new emerging bandwidth demanding services while catering the needs of end-users, while reducing the overall cost and complexity of the network.The goal of this project is to provide interdisciplinary training at the highest level in the area of optical communications and the novel areas of Software Defined Optics (SDO) and OpenFlow Software Defined Networking (SDN). In particular the training will contain the required new skills required to define novel, resilient, cost- and energy-efficient optical networks architectures achieving efficient flexible, reconfigurable, and dynamically-adaptive systems. At the end of this project, new concepts will be proposed and validated to achieve ultra high data rates (beyond 100 Gbps per wavelength), enhanced resource utilization and flexible bandwidth allocation at sub-wavelength granularities using SDO. Furthermore, new network management and networking solutions to flexibly control such network will be demonstrated using SDN.The three early stage researchers joining this European Industrial Doctorate program will hence become trained in a field of high importance within the roadmap of photonics development at industry level and vital importance for the strategic technology growth in Europe."