Professor Doran was formerly the CTO and founder of Marconi-Solstis, which developed and installed the world's longest land-based ultra-high-capacity optical communications system in 2003. He was professor of Photonics at Aston University for nine years (1991-2000), cofounding the Photonics Research Group there and, prior to that, was the leader of the Ultrafast Communications Group at BT Laboratories Martlesham Heath. Professor Doran is Director and Head of IAT.

Professor Doran is well known for his pioneering work in optical solitons and has published more than 150 papers on the subject.He developed the concept of dispersion managed solitons, which is now a widely deployed technology in high speed optical systems. This is the technology he took from the research laboratory to a commercial product with Marconi Solstis, where he led the team of photonics engineers responsible for this development. His research interests include all aspects of optical fibre nonlinearity and he is the inventor of the nonlinear optical loop mirror, which is the most widely employed ultrafast nonlinear optical device and is used in many pioneering research experiments worldwide.

Professor Doran's research is now on all-optical networks for the 21st century, which is anticipated to open up the communications networks of the future to yet greater speed and capacity.

His research will focus on advanced techniques for ultra high capacity optical transmission and experimenting with new types of optical networks. The research will use new techniques for improving optical signals and for processing the data in the optical domain.