Grants worth Dh8m awarded to four universities

Four universities awarded microchip research contracts awarded by US-based semiconductor consortium.

Four UAE universities have been awarded microchip research contracts worth more than Dh8 million in total by a US-based semiconductor consortium.

Semiconductor Research Corp, which pools industry money to finance university research, announced the awards in the US. The contracts are part of a joint effort with the Abu Dhabi Government's Advanced Technology Investment Company (Atic).

Seven of 50 proposals were selected, with contracts going to teams at the American University of Sharjah, Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates University and the Masdar Institute.

The contracts total at least US$2.25m (Dh8.3m), and the research will be conducted in collaboration with American institutions.

Lutfi Albasha, an assistant professor of chip design and microelectronics at the American University of Sharjah, will lead a project to design a low-powered wireless network that would improve the capability of electronic circuits to pick up faint signals from ambient space and harvest that energy.

"This is the future generation of wireless and the way we will charge our batteries in the years to come," he said.

He said the funding, more than Dh1.1m over three years, would be used to cover costs for research assistants, fabricating devices and sophisticated equipment for chips and circuits.