In August, the National Science Foundation in conjunction with the Semiconductor Research Corporation awarded a team of engineering researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago $2.5 million to develop a chip-level photonic device technology for transporting and processing information at the chip level. The researchers, led by ECE Illinois Associate Professor John Dallesasse, will use the transistor laser as the building block for high-speed optical links and electronic-photonic digital logic circuits, enabling faster and more energy efficient chip-to-chip communications and signal/information processing.