CVORG was started by Professor Fouad Kiamilev at the University of North Carolina in 1992. The original CVORG acronym stood for CMOS VLSI Opto-Electronics Research Group. At that time, CVORG mission was to provide custom integrated circuits for photonics research community. Since 1992, we have designed integrated circuits or provided design assistance for numerous research programs. Among DARPA programs that we have supported are CO-OP, FSOIA, VLSI PHOTONICS, STAB, PWASSP, NEOCAD, OPTO-CENTERS, OMNET, PONI, POSH, CHEETAH, ACN, PCA, 3DIC, VHESC I, VHESC II, TEST and C2OI. U.S. Army and Air Force research projects that we have supported include Optical Fuzing, HWIL Systems, 3-D LADAR Imaging, and Optical Interconnects.

In 1999, CVORG relocated to University of Delaware where it has been operating ever since. In 2007, CVORG acronym was changed to CMOS VLSI Optimization Research Group. This modification was done to better reflect our new focus on power saving and power conversion methods for electrical devices that operate from power-limited power sources.

In addition to working at CVORG, Professor Kiamilev has consulted for various companies including Hewlett-Packard, Agilent, Northrop-Grumman, Honeywell, ATT (Bell Laboratories), Aralight, Xanoptix, Stopflow, Silicon Wave, Opticomp, Optivision, and Applied Photonics.

 

The left photo below was taken in 2000 and shows Prof. Kiamilev with his graduate students (from left to right – Premanand Chandramani, Jeremy Ekman, Ping Gui, James Curtis, Xiaoqinq Want). The right photo below was taken in 2007 and shows recent CVORG graduates (from left to right – Jirar Helou, Juergen Vogt, Claudia Barrera, Fouad Kiamilev, and Joshua Kramer).