ARC Centre of Excellence for Breakthrough Science
IPAS researchers Prof Kishan Dholakia, Prof Andre Luiten, Prof Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem, Dr Sarah Scholten and Dr Andy Boes, along with Prof David Lancaster at UniSA are thrilled to be part of the $35m ARC Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS) led by RMIT. The South Australian node will be the largest in the Centre of Excellence.
With $34.9M in funding over 7 years, COMBS CoE aims to explore the society-wide transformations that will flow from optical frequency combs - thousands of highly pure light signals precisely spaced across the entire optical spectrum - by leveraging and building upon the latest breakthroughs in physics, materials science and nanofabrication.
It expects to generate a wide new base of knowledge in fields as diverse as astronomy, spectroscopy, chemical sensors, and precision measurement. Expected outcomes include the capability to realise complete comb systems on a chip the size of a fingernail, tailored to specific applications, with significant benefits spanning from imaging live cells to autonomous vehicles, satellite communications, and the search for exoplanets.