University of Surrey to host £5m photonics project

Funding has been provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Council with a number of industrial partners contributing to the project.

The consortium includes the likes of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute, Qinetiq, Intel and the universities of St Andrews, Leeds, Warwick and Southampton.

Graham Reed, research professor on the project, told Electronics Weekly: "There is renewed interest in silicon photonics because of the microprocessor interconnect bottleneck. If you do it optically, you get a huge bandwidth.

Commercial opportunities

The University of Surrey announced last week its plans for development into the 21st Century with a focussed drive towards becoming a leading international establishment by 2017.

Plans are afoot to increase student numbers over the next decade by 40 per cent and increase turnover by 150 per cent.

It also plans to maximise commercial opportunities as it did with the spin-off operation Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.