A research center that will be based at the University of Illinois has been awarded $30 million over the next five years.

It's called the SONIC center and will focus on building complicated systems out of next-generation circuit technology.

The multidisciplinary center will involve researchers from seven other universities. They are Stanford, Michigan, Princeton, Carnegie-Mellon and the University of California campuses at Berkeley, San Diego and Santa Barbara.

The SONIC center in Illinois is 1 of 6 new centers that will be part of the Semiconductor Research Corp.'s Focus Center Research Program, which gets under way Jan. 1.

About $12.5 million of the award money will go to the Illinois campus.