President's Letter

OIDA News - April 2008

 

President’s Letter - Michael S. Lebby, OIDA President & CEO

 

OIDA has had a strong and fruitful relationship with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) over the past decade. This spring, DARPA approached OIDA for assistance in connecting industry with academia in the optoelectronics arena. This request has now led to a seedling project for a new optoelectronics centers program in which DARPA is planning to fund optoelectronics research in academia in the amount of $50 million later in 2008.

OIDA’s role this spring is to seek industry involvement and leadership from senior executives in this new program. The new program will allow industry to match, lead, and create specific areas that align with industrial interests on a 5-10 year horizon. Historically, optoelectronics-funded programs such as the Universities Photonics Research do not having matching requirements. The new program is expected to demonstrate collaborative ideas, concepts, and opportunities in optoelectronics that should align with industrial long-term research goals.

Industry will be encouraged to participate in the program, and even have a strong say in the research direction. A number of companies have already indicated to OIDA that they would love to see a stove-pipe, or focused research, approach in which each participating company can choose what stove-pipe they would like to work with. For example, the following stove-pipe areas have already been promoted:

• Very high speed optical communications devices (100 Gbps and beyond)
• Integrated solar device platforms
• Plastics photonics (organic PVs, displays, lighting)
• 'Green' photonics (energy efficiency technological solutions for sustainability)
• Smart fabric photonics for sensing, display, and PV ability
• Optofluidics and biophotonic integration

What is not known yet, is how much industry would be willing to contribute to the new program. Stay tuned…you’ll hear from OIDA soon on this subject!

Connecting industry with academia is going to be a recurring theme at OIDA in the coming months: there will be other details that will be raised from IP, patents, industrial influence, to even the creation of an advisory board.

Having just concluded a forum in San Jose on manufacturing overseas and innovation/ corporate research, we look forward to seeing you at our next forums in the fall (details in this newsletter), and we look forward to your participation in the new DARPA optoelectronics initiative later this year!

Michael