2025-2026 Funded Projects
Funded Projects for AY 2025-2026
Thanks to our industry and university members, we are currently able to fund the below proposed projects for this academic year (August 2025- July 2026). Projects began at the start of the Fall semester, on August 16th, 2025. Congratulations to our PIs for their successful proposals.
Theme 1: "Photonic Interface for Smart Packaging"
PIs - Lynford Goddard, Kent Choquette, Paul Braun
“The overarching project goal is to demonstrate a robust interface of 3-dimensional optical interconnects between 2-dimensional optical source and detector array chips for intra-chip and inter-chip data transfer. We propose to overcome the packaging interface challenge of routing input/output optical signals onto an optoelectronic chip.”
Theme 1: "Spin Torques and Giant Magnetoresistance from Altermagnetism"
PI - Axel Hoffmann
“Non-collinear antiferromagnets, while exhibiting zero net magnetization, manifest a pronounced spin splitting due to the interplay between their crystal symmetry and magnetic order, known as altermagnetism. Our goal is to leverage altermagnetism in non-collinear antiferromagnets to realize unconventional spin torques and giant magnetoresistance (GMR), a breakthrough that could serve as a building-block for antiferromagnetic information devices, enabling efficient logic and memory technologies.”
Theme 1 & 2: "Butt-coupled Lasers on Silicon Photonic Platforms via Remote Epitaxy and Wafer-Scale Self-Assembly"
PIs - Hyunseok Kim, Minjoo Lawrence (Larry) Lee
“We aim to develop wafer-scale heterogeneous integration of III-V lasers onto silicon photonic wafers, leveraging remote epitaxy and scalable transfer processes. This approach addresses the challenges of existing III-V/Si integration techniques, such as wafer-to-wafer bonding, die-to-wafer bonding, photonic wire bonding, and monolithic approaches, and can dramatically improve yield, scalability, reliability, and performance.”
Theme 1 & 2: "Heterogeneous Integration of Lithium Niobate on III-V/Si Substrates"
PIs - Minjoo Lawrence (Larry) Lee, Chris Anderson
“Our overarching goal is to create platforms that reimagine photonic device structures to facilitate heterogeneous integration. Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), which consists of a bonded layer of lithium niobate on an oxidized silicon substrate, is emerging as a powerful platform for data communication owing to its combination of low propagation loss, strong electro-optic coefficient, and efficient frequency comb generation. Heterogeneous integration of III-V gain with TFLN modulators and frequency combs would enable compact, low-cost optical transceivers for near-term commercial applications in data centers.”
Theme 2: "Strain-Induced Mobility Enhancement in 2D Material Transistor"
PIs - Arend van der Zande, Shaloo Rakheja
“The goal of this project is to apply process induced strain techniques to enhance transport in 2D field effect transistors. We propose to model how process induced strains from thin film deposition transfer into 2D material monolayers, and leverage process induced strain techniques to enhance mobility in 2D transistors.”
Theme 3: "Exploring Novel Memory Architecture Using Emerging Devices"
PIs - Saugata Ghose, Shaloo Rakheja
“As the ASAP Center produces new memory devices under Themes 1 and 2, we will explore how to integrate these devices into practical memory architectures that can be fabricated and used at scale. We will develop detailed models of devices being developed by other ASAP projects, and incorporate them into an extended version of our open-source memory architecture simulator, to allow for early-stage (i.e., pre-device-fab) exploration of ideal memory array topologies, architectural properties, and potential for processing-in-memory.”