This spring key officials from the Lorraine region of France met at Georgia Tech-Lorraine to sign a Statute of Incorporation, which legally established the Lafayette Institute, a €28 million (approximately $37 million) facility that will facilitate the commercialization of innovations in optoelectronics.

Signatories representing the French funding entities were Jean-Luc Bohl, President of the Metz Metropole, Jean-Yves Le Déaut, vice president of the Lorraine Regional Council, and François Lavergne, vice president of the Department of the Moselle. Also present were Dominique Gros, Mayor of Metz, Yves Berthelot, president of Georgia Tech-Lorraine, Abdallah Ougazzaden, director of Georgia Tech-Lorraine and director of the Georgia Tech-CNRS Unité Mixte Internationale 2958 Laboratory, and Bernard Kippelen, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech who represented Georgia Tech-Global.

The Lafayette Institute will be housed in a newly constructed 20,000-square-foot building on the Georgia Tech Lorraine campus, which will include a 5,000 square foot clean room, fully equipped with state-of-the art semiconductor growth capabilities. Georgia Tech is to provide support from its Enterprise Innovation Institute, the university’s business and economic development arm, which aims to help enterprises use science, technology and innovation to improve their competitiveness. It also will share its expertise from the Nanotechnology Research Center. The Lafayette Institute will focus on the development of compound and organic semiconductors for technologies at the intersection of materials, optics, photonics, electronics and nanotechnology. These new technologies will have applications in the energy sector, new display technologies, and sensors and medical technology.