Stones that shed light on future communications

New funding and a new chief executive promise an interesting future for a research institute at UCC, writes Dick Ahlstrom

The beauty of an opal stone provides an unusual starting point for research underway at Cork's Tyndall National Institute. The research could develop ways to get more digital information down a fibre optic cable.

"The Tyndall's role is to research and develop new concepts in the area of information and communications technology," explains its new chief executive officer, Prof Roger Whatmore. "It is all about handling and transmitting information and doing intelligent things with it."

A physics graduate, Prof Whatmore last month moved across from a senior post at Cranfield University in the UK to head the Tyndall Institute. He arrived just as the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment announced significant new funding for 2006.

Science Foundation Ireland will put a further €7 million into the Tyndall this year, following the €21 million announced over the past two years for infrastructural and access funding and advanced equipment.

This State commitment to basic research helped convince Prof Whatmore to assume the role of chief executive of the institute. The "new" institute is in fact made up of the old National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC) and other research units, including the photonics group headed by Prof David Cotter.

"I had been invited by the Irish Government to do a review on a programme they had funded at the Tyndall," says Prof Whatmore. Coincidentally, the Tyndall was looking for a new head who had academic and industrial experience. It found one in Prof Whatmore, who spent 11 years at Cranfield and 18 more working in industry.

The Tyndall is unusual in that it is legally independent from University College Cork, yet it is made up of research elements found within UCC, says Prof Whatmore.

It remains in the Lee Maltings complex where the former NMRC was based.

The Tyndall has received financial support from a wide range of bodies, including the Higher Education Authority via the Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, Enterprise Ireland, the Industrial Development Authority and the EU.

Its focus is strongly on computer communications, says Prof Whatmore. "It seems we are insatiable in the amount of information we like to transmit around the place," he says.

The Tyndall pursues research that supports information and communications technology and therefore covers a wide range of research areas.

"The main strand of activity is silicon-driven, doing new things with silicon," Prof Whatmore explains.

Silicon chips provide the foundation on which modern computing is built, but at the Tyndall the goal is to discover new capabilities by attaching novel things to the silicon. For example, some of the 300 or so researchers and students working at the institute are looking at new biological interfaces that will connect microchips and biomolecules for use as sensors.

Work is also underway into "three-five" or "III-V" semiconductor materials. These are made from element combinations taken from groups three and five on the periodic table. Chief among them is gallium arsenide, but there are others.

The opal research relates to what are called "photonic band gap materials", substances that receive light in one wavelength and reflect it in another. It is this characteristic that gives opal its depth and beauty as it scatters back light in vivid purples and greens.

The ability to vary light wavelength also holds out the possibility of greatly increasing the data density that can be moved down a fibre optic cable, says Prof Whatmore. "It is like sending more than one train down a single railway line."

The development of photonic systems is another important part of activities at the Tyndall Institute. These are computer systems that work using light photons rather than electrons.

This in turn links in with the III-V semiconductors, given that these are much better at generating light than traditional silicon semiconductors.

Information and communications technology research today necessarily involves nanotechnology and so the Tyndall has close contacts with Trinity College Dublin, where the Crann nanotechnology research centre is being built. Prof Whatmore points out, however, that the Tyndall co-operates with researchers from across Ireland.

"We are a national institute," he says. "We have people working here from a range of places across Ireland."

These links arise under the National Access Programme.