March 2015 iMAPS New England Chapter Technical Meeting 

“Developing Printed Electronics for DoD Applications Through University/Corporate/Government Partnerships”

Thanks to a $4 million grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the future of printed and flexible electronics is closer than you think. And, that future is emerging right here at UMass Lowell with the newly christened Raytheon-UMass Lowell Research Institute. Professor Craig Armiento, Director of the Printed Electronics Research Collaborative (PERC) will provide insights related to the development and implementation of this ambitious plan.

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has established a center for development of Printed Electronics (PE) with a focus on RF/microwave applications. This research effort will be done in conjunction with corporate and government partners. This talk will discuss the Raytheon-U Mass Lowell Research Institute (RURI) and will describe work on printed antennas and frequency selective surfaces. The Printed Electronics Research Collaborative (PERC), which is partially supported by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, will establish a team of companies focused on developing the PE supply chain with a focus on the defense cluster in the region.

Our Speaker: Professor Craig Armiento, Director of The Printed Electronics Research Collaborative (PERC)

Dr. Armiento is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and is also Director of the Center for Photonics, Electromagnetics and Nanoelectronics (PEN). He is a founder and Co-Director of the Raytheon-UMass Lowell Research Institute (RURI) and served as ECE Department Chair from 2005-2011. Prof. Armiento’s current research interests are printed electronics and antennas, photonic devices, advanced packaging, Flex-Hybrid integration and RFIDs.

Prior to coming to UMass Lowell in 2003, Prof. Armiento had over twenty years of industrial R&D experience. He led research projects at GTE Laboratories (now Verizon) on projects including Fiber-to-the-Home (now FiOS), optoelectronic hybrid integration, III-V device fabrication and GaAs ICs. He also was Director of Optical Networking at Lightchip Optical Networks Inc. and was a researcher at MIT. Lincoln laboratory. Prof. Armiento has over 100 publications and presentations and 16 U.S. patents.  He received the Ph.D., S.M. and E.E. degrees from MIT.