ODU HELPING START CENTER TO STUDY TINY ELECTRONICS

Old Dominion University has partnered with two other Virginia universities to start a research center to develop the next generation of electronics. The Virginia Nanoelectronics Center (ViNC), as it is called, has brought together ODU in collaboration with UVA and the College of William and Mary. The institutions launched the center at the end of May.

Affiliated with the UVA Institute for Nanoscale and Quantum Scientific and Technological Advanced Research, the center will conduct research aimed at producing faster, smaller and cheaper computer device for everything from automobiles to energy-efficient homes.

The center will bring together world-class researchers to explore and develop advanced materials, novel devices and circuits at nanoscale dimensions. The university partners have worked closely with Micron Technology Inc., one of the world's leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions and owner of a memory chip manufacturing facility in Manassas, to launch the new center.

ViNC is being established with starting grants from the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative and the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium and matching funds from the three participating universities, for a total of nearly $1.7 million over two years. The center's projects are also funded by National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.