As part of the fiscal 2010 US Department of Defense appropriations bill, GigOptix Inc. has been approved to receive $4.5 million in funding toward the development of an integrated photonic transceiver, to be kicked off in the first quarter of 2010 and fully deployed through 2010. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives on Dec. 15 and approved by the Senate on Dec. 19. The new product development will allow the company to extend its electro-optic polymer technology to support integration with electronic circuits for ultrahigh-speed communications, and it will augment the cross synergy of the various technologies that GigOptix commands as a result of the acquisition of iTerra (July 2007), Helix (January 2008), Lumera (December 2008) and ChipX (November 2009). “We have been looking forward to this news and working with the AFRL [Air Force Research Laboratory] program managers to ensure we meet the government’s technical needs with this program. We are already working with commercial companies to integrate our polymer onto CMOS integrated circuits for intrachip optical interconnects, but this program will be focused on integrating a photonics system with our own electronics and polymer technology being combined,” said Dr. Raluca Dinu, vice president and general manger of GigOptix. “The US troops need the best technologies to maintain their security objectives, and we are honored to be chosen to support them.” “The support of this project reflects the hard work and perseverance of Senator Murray,” said Dr. Avi Katz, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of GigOptix. “I would like to thank her for her continuous support of Washington State companies and for her loyal and continuous commitment to GigOptix’s technology vision and mission.” For more information, visit: www.gigoptix.com