NC State ECE Researchers Secure DARPA Funding for New Project, HAPPI
Researchers from NC State’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have secured a three-year, $5 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aimed at improving energy efficient communications for a variety of applications. Stan Cheung, Jonathan Wierer and Fred Kish lead NC State’s team.
May 8, 2025 
Colleen Brown
Researchers from NC State’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have secured a three-year, $5 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aimed at improving energy efficient communications for a variety of applications.
Stan Cheung, ECE associate professor, leads the project, along with Co-Principal Investigators Fred Kish, MC Dean Distinguished Professor and Jonathan Wierer, professor. Additional collaborators come from the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology. Unique to this project are its ties to industry via NHanced Semiconductors, a Triangle-based manufacturer of interconnect technologies like silicon interposers, chiplets and more.
HAPPI, which stands for Heterogeneous Adaptively Produced Photonic Interfaces, aims to revolutionize the information transmission within microsystems by achieving a 1000x increase in connective density through advanced light-based technologies. The team’s proposed solution, named 3-Dimensional Photonic Routing Enabled by STacked Adaptive PICs, (3D-PRESTA-PICs) focuses on developing 3D light-based pathways within and between chips, which will enable unprecedented levels of information flow and processing. This technology has the potential to impact a number of critical fields, including AI, high-performance computing systems, quantum computing, LiDAR and more.
“The goal is to create a technology standard with our partners at DARPA, the CLAWS hub, the other universities and with NHanced,” said Cheung. “We don’t see this project as a one shot research endeavor. DARPA wants to be able to scale this technology up, and having an industry partner, especially a local one, is critical for that.”
Prior to joining NC State in 2024, Cheung worked for Hewlett-Packard Laboratories on large-scale integrated photonics research. He was drawn to a university environment, and NC State in particular, because of the widely available connections the College of Engineering and the Triangle can provide. Like other large-scale projects, this is a story of collaboration.
“We had to leverage a lot of expertise, not only within NC State, but also at UT Austin and Caltech,” said Cheung. “UT Austin has unique fabrication processes, and Caltech has expertise in designing the flat-surface meta-lenses we need. Additionally, some of the technology that’s being developed at CLAWS, like low-loss, visible spectrum waveguide tech, has been really instrumental in furthering our work.”