This award is for a "Self-Sufficient Partnership for Research Program" to be established at the University of Arizona's Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Optical Circuitry. Optical circuitry is an emerging technology that has the potential for making major, if not revolutionary, contributions to signal processing, communication and computing. The I/UCRC on optical circuitry also called the optical circuitry cooperative was founded in 1984 and is presently engaged in the study of optical nonlinearities of semiconductors and organic compound; fabrication and characterization of fast optical switching elements; growth of novel MBE structures; theoretical and experimental studies of semiconductor lasers; investigation of optical interconnect systems with free space diffractive elements and optical neural networks. At the present time 7 professors, 4 post doctoral fellows and approximately 10 graduate students are involved in this research. The Center has presently five members and will add a new DoD member this year. The Center also plans to support a woman undergraduate student who will be working on the measurement of optical nonlinearities of fullerene materials. Additonal funding is provided by the U.S. Department of Airforce to obtain a membership in the Center. The Program Manager recommends the University of Arizona be awarded $50,000 for the first year of a three-year continuing award and $5,000 for one year with funds provided by the Women, Minorities, and Disabled Engineering Research Assistants Program, and $50,000 for one year with funds provided by U.S. Department of Airforce. Near the end of each 12-month period, the Program Manager and/or the Division of Director of the Engineering Education Centers Division will review the progress of the Center on a number of renewal criteria, including the following: 1) the extent to which the university-industry interaction is developing; 2) the extent to which the support base is developing; 3) the extent to which a robust research program is developing. If the review is satisfactory, the Program Manager will recommend support for the next period of this continuing award.
