Dr. Kartalopoulos was with Bell Laboratories for 22 years. He defined, led and managed research and development teams in the areas of DWDM optical networks, SONET and ATM, Cross-connect, Switching, Transmission and Access systems and components. For his contributions, he has received the company's President's Award and several awards of Excellence.

He holds numerous patents in communications networks, systems and components and he has published widely. He is the author of reference books particularly important in advanced fiber optic communications titled "Optical Bit Error Rate", "Next Generation SONET/SDH", "DWDM: Networks, Systems and Components", "Introduction to DWDM Technology", "Fault Detectability in DWDM", "Understanding SONET/SDH and ATM", "Understanding Neural Networks and Fuzzy logic", and he has also contributed chapters to other books.

He has been an IEEE and a Lucent Technologies Distinguished Lecturer, has lectured at international conferences, Universities and at NASA, has moderated executive forums and has organized workshops and sessions at major international communications conferences.

Dr Kartalopoulos serves his last term as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Press, he is a member of IEEE PSPB, past-chair of ComSoc Emerging Technologies and SPCE Technical Committees, and VP of IEEE NNC (currently, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society).