Eligible Entities
- Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs): Two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting on behalf of their faculty members.
- Non-profit, non-academic organizations: Independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, professional societies and similar organizations located in the U.S. that are directly associated with educational or research activities.
For all proposals submitted by Institutions of Higher Education, the lead Principal Investigator (PI) must be full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty. For all proposals submitted by Non-Profit, Non-Academic Organizations, the lead PI must: (1) have a continuing appointment that is expected to last the full term of the EFRI award; (2) have substantial research responsibilities; and (3) relate to the PI’s job responsibilities as well as to the mission of the department or organization.
For all proposals, either the PI or one of the co-PIs must have a full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty appointment within a College/Department of Engineering. Track 2 proposals must involve a minimum of one PI and two co-PIs.
Eligible Activities
The EFRI Wave-Based Computing (WBC) solicitation will support foundational and transformative research to advance the development of computing approaches that harness the principles of wave dynamics.
The EFRI WBC solicitation will support two tracks.
- Track 1: Exploratory approaches may be funded through Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) awards.
- Track 2: Larger, multidisciplinary projects may be funded through four-year awards of up to $2,000,000.
Advances in materials, transducers, and design concepts should make it increasingly feasible to miniaturize and thus integrate WBC units within compact, chip-scale systems. WBC can use multiple physical architectures, such as free-space, waveguides, metasurfaces, and plasmonic structures. Research supported through this solicitation is expected to explore a variety of wave types, media, and platforms. Potential outcomes include:
- Multiplexed architectures for compact parallel computing: Use of metasurfaces, integrated photonics, transducer-based systems, or other approaches to enable scalable WBC.
- High-order nonlinear processes: New materials and devices leveraging nonlinear phenomena for increased computational throughput or floating-point operations per second in WBC systems.
- Reconfigurable photonic and acoustic devices: Development of dynamically tunable systems, such as metasurfaces or phase-change materials, integrated into platforms to support adaptive WBC.
- Hybrid wave-quantum computing: Integration of quantum technologies—such as quantum light sources, detectors, nonlinear elements, and Floquet-engineered systems—into WBC architectures.
- Topological and quantum system concepts: Leveraging these in WBC platforms.
- Miniaturized chiplets and chip-scale integration: Design and demonstration of compact, integrated devices capable of chip-level advanced information processing.
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