Today’s data centers are consuming megawatts of power, and the accelerating trend of exponential growth in data center traffic is a huge concern. Distinguished Professor S. J. Ben Yoo (Electrical and Computer Engineering) is one of the six principal investigators invited to participate in the new Intel Research Center on Integrated Photonics for Data Center Interconnect. Prof. Yoo’s work pursues 10x-100x improvements in energy efficiency, density, and temperature dependence; his team will pursue extremely energy-efficient (150 fJ/b), athermal, high-capacity (> 40 Tb/s Duplex), and high-density (> 16 Tb/s/mm) silicon photonic transceivers that can operate robustly across 0-100oC temperature range. In addition to his new generation of silicon-photonic modulators, nanodetectors, and silicon photonic integrated circuits, he will be pursuing co-design/co-integration of photonic ICs and electronic ICs together with Prof. Sam Palermo of Texas A&M. The total amount of funding given to the consortium of six is undisclosed.