Congratulations to Dr Ivan O’Connell, CONNECT Funded Investigator and Head of Precision Circuits at the Microelectronic Circuits Centre Ireland (MCCI) in Tyndall, who has won a funding award in the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme.
Head of Precision Circuits at the
Microelectronic Circuits Centre Ireland (MCCI) in Tyndall,
Partner agencies in the funding scheme include Science Foundation Ireland, the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, and the National Science Foundation in the United States.
Ivan is the lead applicant on a project entitled “Enabling next generation integrated optoelectronics with free-form metamaterials based on graphene” whereby Tyndall is the lead institution. The total value of the award is €442,860, and the co-applicants are Dr Hamza Shakeel (Queen’s University Belfast) and Prof Berardi Sensale-Rodriguez (University of Utah).
The project will enable next-generation optical communications, extending the reach and capability of existing fibre optical communication networks. In particular, the team will develop optical components which are compact, energy-efficient, silicon-compatible, and reconfigurable, for use in communication and sensing applications. The researchers will also explore the integration of 2-D materials with nanophotonic structures designed through the recently proposed free-form metamaterials concept.
It is one of only four awards announced as part of a joint investment of €12 million through a tripartite research and development partnership between the United States of America, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Find out more here