The University of Buffalo is currently assisting the U.S Navy in the development of a new all-electric warship which is expected to be operational by 2012. If this venture is successful, the ship will only require a crew of one hundred, which is much more efficient than the battleships in service now which require thousands of people.

According to the Navy, the biggest problem they're currently facing in designing the ship is the fact that the current generation of shipboard electrical systems cannot distribute electrical power to the entire ship. This would make the use of advanced weapons and sensors which require a lot of power impractical.

To solve this problem, Cemal Basaran, the director of the Electronic Packaging Laboratory in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was given a US$ 500,000 grant to design the next-generation of power electronics. Specifically, units which are capable of carrying high-current density and high power to the entire warship.  He said that the developments he plans on introducing will be a major step in modern warship designs:

The next-generation power electronics that will control the ship will lead to major improvements in effectiveness, survivability and cost savings, as well as a significant reduction in the size of the vessel's components.

The state-of-the art electronic packaging technology cannot handle the huge electrical power needed by an electric ship's warfare and civilian components in micron and nanoscale packages.

Right now most electrical components are huge and waste too much power, but they don't need to. We can reduce their size and waste by orders of magnitude, while increasing their ability to handle high current-density and high-power levels in harsh environments, significantly.