ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY
AND INDUSTRIAL AFFILIATES PROGRAM
MNTL spin-off company EpiWorks, a leading provider of compound semiconductor epitaxial wafers, was purchased by II-VI Inc. in early 2016 for $ 49 million. By the end of the year, the company announced a major expansion of its Champaign production facility that will quadruple its wafer-making capabilities. In addition to substantial epitaxial wafer production space, the new cleanroom will house a state-of-the-art wafer characterization and test laboratory. This aggressive expansion enhances EpiWorks’ leadership position in the global compound semiconductor industry, supporting the performance and volume requirements for several key components that enable multiple growing markets. These include InP and GaAs-based optoelectronic communication components for cloud computing and datacenters, VCSELs for 3D sensing, and next-generation wide-bandgap devices for 5G wireless infrastructure.
EpiWorks was founded in 1997 by ECE alumni David Ahmari( PhD 1998) and Quesnell Hartmann( PhD 1998), along with their doctoral advisor Professor Greg Stillman, to commercialize novel material deposition techniques and designs for high-performance III-V epitaxial devices that they developed at MNTL.
Bioengineering doctoral student Anurup Ganguli, a member of Professor Rashid Bashir’ s group, received a $ 150,000 first prize in the Student Technology Prize for Primary Healthcare competition administered by Massachusetts General Hospital through its Ambulatory Practice of the Future initiative. Ganguli and his research team developed a novel technology for rapid detection of infectious diseases like HIV, hepatitis B & C, and Zika virus in all primary-care settings. The team will use the prize money to accelerate the development of their diagnostic tool, which collects a patient’ s blood sample with a simple finger prick, making it an affordable option in resource-limited countries.
Ganguli and his research team developed a novel technology for rapid detection of infectious diseases.
Working at MNTL, the research team( left to right) of Akid Ornob, Anurup Ganguli, Tanmay Ghonge, Greg Damhorst, and Professors Rashid Bashir and Brian Cunningham developed a diagnostic tool that detects infectious diseases with superior and minimal sample processing compared to conventional techniques.
MNTL | 14 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign