A four-year, $6.2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will be used by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to create a photonics research center to develop ultrafast light sources for high-speed signal processing and optical communications systems.

The mission of the Hyper-Uniform Nanophotonic Technology Center is to develop fabrication methods, high-performance quantum dot arrays and ultrafast lasers for optoelectronic interconnects, said its director, Norman K.Y. Cheng, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a researcher at the university's micro- and nanoelectronics laboratory.

Partner institutions are Columbia and Harvard universities and Georgia Institute of Technology.