The new organization – the Northrop Grumman Institute of Nanophotonics and Nanomaterials (NG-ION²) – will bring together research teams from the university and the aerospace industry to explore the properties of tiny structures and materials that exist only at the atomic level.

Northrop Grumman will contribute $500,000 to NG-ION² in 2016.

This funding will help foster interdisciplinary research by material scientists, electrical engineers, physicists and chemists to develop novel materials for optical devices.

Professor Andrea Armani, of USC Viterbi and Jesse Tice, senior scientist and Nanomaterials Group lead, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, will serve as

NG-ION²’s co-directors. Armani leads a research group focused on integrated photonics.

NG-ION² will also enable regular exchanges between USC and Northrop Grumman researchers working across projects. USC Viterbi will grant Northrop Grumman scientists visiting researcher positions, a strategy that will allow them to work collaboratively on campus with their Institute counterparts to advance science in nanomaterials and integrated photonics.

The Northrop Grumman/USC Viterbi team has selected a wide range of projects for initial support in 2016. They include theoretical and experimental studies on 2-D materials, plasmonics, and nonlinear optics.