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The ERI’s growth in membership and in research grants has been greatest by far in the area of nanotechnology. ERI members through these grants have brought in advanced instruments that support nanotechnology, and as a result have created a user facility containing several of these instruments (many unique to Kentucky and the Ohio Valley region, e.g. advanced electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes, nanoprinters, nanomaterials composition and structure analyzers for observing the growth of atomic monolayers). The continued growth in nanotechnology funding justified broadening the name of ERI to ElectroOptics Research Institute & Nanotechnology Center (ERINC).
In order to remain flexible to changing situations, as well as to better represent the increased and widely dispersed members, ERINC is conducting annual summit meeting to review the ERINC name, mission, and progress and to develop coordinated group plans, strategies and recommendations to UofL and theCommonwealth.
ERINC’s principal achievements include:
In addition to funding from grants, the University is providing direct financial support towards the ERINC mission. These funds enable ERINC to actively pursue the award of Federal research centers and to transform the major new research instruments from individual use to fully maintained and supported service recharge centers. The investment of such funds enable us to build on the successes of ERINC.
The ERI has identified Nanotechnology as a major area for growth. Funding from NSF and the state have been provided to help in developing the necessary personnel and infrastructure needed to make this a major research and educational enterprise. Recent trends and other views on the significance of nanotechnology are presented in the following reports.
ElectroOptics is a multidisciplinary field of research that is contributing increasingly to the economic vitality and technological strength of the U.S. in areas including lasers, optoelectronic devices, materials processing, optical design, infrared imaging, visual displays, and the psychology of visual perception. This research is heavily funded by universities and industry. The amount of funding and the scope of the projects is only expected to increase.
In Kentucky there are several research projects in electrooptics, but there is only limited collaboration among Kentucky researchers and limited awareness of each others' programs. We have initiated an ElectroOptics Research Institute that provides the nucleus around which universities and business concerns throughout Kentucky coalesce and pursue larger scale research and infrastructure grants.
The ElectroOptics Research Institute joins together electrooptics faculty from the Universities of Louisville and Kentucky, and affiliated researchers from the Illinois Institute of Technology, China and Russia. From this core we are pursuing collaborative research and infrastructural development activities with faculty and industrial electrooptics researchers throughout the world.