By Daily Press staff
UCLA has been selected to lead a new multi-million dollar research center as part of an initiative to expand semiconductor research at universities.
The Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics Focus Center will be funded by the Semiconductor Industry Association — the world’s largest trade association — and the Department of Defense.
The new center, which has been established in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, will receive $13.5 million over three years, and as much as $70 million over the next 10 years.
Electrical engineering professor Kang Wang has been named director of the focus center, which involves researchers from UCLA’s departments of materials science, chemistry and mathematics, as well as 11 other universities, including UC Berkeley, USC and MIT.
The FENA researchers will explore the challenges facing the semiconductor industry as the electronic devices and circuits that power today’s computers grow ever smaller. With more transistors and other components squeezed onto a single chip, manufacturers are rapidly approaching the physical limits posed by current chip-making processes.
“Advances in nanotechnology, molecular electronics, and quantum computing are creating the potential for new technology solutions, and we want to explore them,” Wang said. “University-based research collaborations like this focus center are vital to sustaining long-term growth in the semiconductor industry.”
In the last two years, UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has won five competitive research centers from the federal government and private industry that will bring more than $100 million to Southern California to spur research and development on emerging technologies.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 20, 2003. Read the original PDF.