ECE Seminar Series
The seminar series explores cutting-edge research in all areas of ECE, facing the grand challenges of our time. It focuses on a wide range of topics in ECE, including microelectronics, photonics and unconventional computing (both quantum and non-quantum) in the post-Moore era, and the theory and applications of machine learning and AI. The series will feature some of the most promising and established researchers in the field, and provide a unique opportunity for participants to learn about the latest developments and engage in discussions with invited experts and ECE graduate students. Additionally, it will promote diversity by featuring a diverse range of speakers and perspectives, ensuring the broad accessibility of the latest ideas and breakthroughs.
Series Committee Members – Faculty: B.S. Manjunath (Chair), Kerem Çamsarı, Haewon Jeong, Jason Marden, John Schuller and Graduate Student Association: Ozgur Guldogan, Monsij Biswal
Upcoming ECE Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series (2024-25)
Nikhil Shukla, Associate Professor, ECE, University of Virginia
"Analog vs. Digital Computing: Revisiting the Old to Innovate the New"
Shuklas's Talk – November 22 (Fri) @ 2:00pm | Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 1001
Nikhil Shukla is currently an Assoc. Prof. at UVA in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He also serves as the UVA deputy site director of the MIST (Multifunctional Integrated System Technology) center, an industry-university cooperative research center. He received his PhD from the U. of Notre Dame in 2017. His research interests lie in the general area of the physics of computing, and he is presently interested in exploring opportunities for efficient computation through device-circuit-and computing model co-design. He has authored/co-authored over 85 journal and conference papers. He is a member of IEEE Nanotechnology Council Committee on Quantum, Neuromorphic and Unconventional Computing. He has served as a session chair as well as a technical program committee member for various conferences in the computing and VLSI area such as DAC (Design Automation Conference), ISVLSI (IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI), CICC (Custom Integrated Circuits Conference).
Past ECE Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series (2024-25)
Dr. Raghuveer Rao, Chief, Intelligent Perception Branch, DEVCOM ARL
"The Army Research Laboratory: Some Current Interests and Opportunities"
Rao's Talk – November 15 (Fri) @ 2:00pm | Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 1001
Raghuveer Rao is the Chief of the Intelligent Perception Branch at the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Adelphi, Maryland, where he oversees R&D in multimodal computer vision and applications, mainly to autonomous systems and scene understanding. Prior to joining ARL, Dr. Rao was a professor of electrical engineering and imaging science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has held visiting appointments with the Indian Institute of Science, the US Air Force Research Laboratory, the US Naval Surface Warfare Center, and Princeton University. He has made multiple research contributions to signal & image processing, communication, and computer vision, and serves as an ABET program evaluator for electrical engineering. Dr. Rao is a life fellow of IEEE and an elected fellow of SPIE.
Ravi Ramamoorthi, Ronald L. Graham Professor of Computer Science, UCSD
"Sampling and Signal-Processing for High-Dimensional Visual Appearance in Computer Graphics and Vision"
Ramamoorthi's Talk – October 25 (Fri) @ 2:00pm | Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 1001
Ravi Ramamoorthi is the Ronald L. Graham Professor of Computer Science at UCSD and founding director of the UC San Diego Center for Visual Computing. He earlier held tenured faculty positions at UC Berkeley and Columbia University, in all of which he played a key leadership role in building multi-faculty research groups recognized as leaders in computer vision and graphics. He has authored more than 200 refereed publications in computer graphics and vision, including 100+ ACM SIGGRAPH/TOG papers.
Past ECE Seminar Series Distinguished Lectures & Talks (2023-24)
ECE Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series
- Matthew W. Daniels, Project Leader, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – “Computing Beyond Boolean Logic Using Time, Stochasticity, and Geometry"
- DK Panda, Professor, Computer Science & Engineering, Ohio State University – "Creating Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure for Democratizing AI: Overview of the Activities at the NSF-AI Institute ICICLE"
- Takako Hirokawa, Principal Device Engineer, GlobalFoundries – "Latest Progress and Challenges in 300 mm Monolithic Silicon Photonics Manufacturing"
- Mrinalini Lakshminarayanan, Head of Product Strategy & Innovation, Verizon – “Future of Connected World Technologies"
- Kush Varshney, Distinguished Researcher, IBM Research – “A Carative Approach to AI Governance"
- Shyam Gollakota, Washington Research Foundation Endowed Professor, UW – "Augmenting Human Auditory Perception with AI”
- Richard Mirin, Group Leader, Quantum Nanophotonics, NIST Boulder – “High-efficiency, Superconducting Single-photon Detectors from Ultraviolet to Long-wavelength Infrared”
- Elza Erkip, Institute Professor, ECE, NYU – “Distributed Compression in the Era of Machine Learning”
- Priyadarshini Panda, Assistant Professor, EE, Yale University – ”Rethinking AI Algorithm and Hardware Design with Neuromorphic Computing"
- Jagadeesh Balam, Senior Research Manager & Taejin Park, Senior Research Scientist, NVIDIA – “NVIDIA NeMo Toolkit for Conversational AI: An Open Source Framework for Advanced Speech Models"
ECE Seminar Series Talks
Past ECE Seminar Series Distinguished Lectures & Talks (2022-23)
ECE Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series
- Melanie Weber, Ass't Prof. of Applied Math & Science, Harvard – "Exploiting Geometric Structure in Machine Learning and Optimization,"
- Adam Smith, Professor, Computer Science, Boston University – "Privacy in Machine Learning and Statistical Inference"
- John Sipe, Professor, Physics, U of Toronto – "Thinking About Squeezed States"
- Sayeef Salahuddin, TSMC Distinguished Prof., UC Berkeley – "CMOS+X: Integrated Ferroelectric Devices for Energy Efficient Electronics"
- Urbashi Mitra, Prof., ECE, USC – "How Designing an Application-specific Algorithm Led to a New Form of Reinforcement Learning"
- John Martinis, Prof. Physics, UCSB – My Trek from Fundamental to Industrial Research: Quantum Systems Engineering"
- Justin Solomon, Assoc. Prof., EECS, MIT – "Volumetric Methods for Modeling, Deformation, and Correspondence"
- Dr. Masoud Mohseni, Google Quantum AI – "Quantum-inspired Nonlocal Monte Carlo for Optimization and Sampling”
