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), Elaheh Ahmadi, Kerem Çamsarı, Haewon Jeong, Tobia Marcucci and Graduate Student Association: Anantajit Subrahmanya
Upcoming Lecture at the ECE Seminar Series (2026-2025)
Nuutti Tervo, Visiting Professor, UC, Santa Barbara
"Signal Processing Meets RF Hardware: Compensating RF Nonidealities in Future Wireless Systems"
Tervo's Talk – Oct 31 (Fri) @ 2:00 | Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 1001
Nuutti Tervo received his B.Sc. (Tech.), M.Sc. (Tech.), and D.Sc. (Tech.) degrees from the University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, in 2014, 2014, and 2022, all with distinctions. He works as an Assistant Professor (tenure track) with the Centre for Wireless Communications—Radio Technologies (CWC-RT) research unit at the University of Oulu. Currently, he is also a visiting researcher and a Fulbright Finland Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, until February 2026. From April 2022 to March 2024, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oulu, leading the RF signal processing research at the RF group. Since September 2023, he has also worked as the coordinator of the Devices and Circuit Technologies research area in the 6G flagship program by the Academy of Finland... (more)
Past ECE Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series (2026-2025)
Elaheh Ahmadi, Associate Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Novel Devices for Emerging Applications through Materials Innovations"
Elaheh Ahmadi's Talk – Oct 24 (Fri) @ 2:00pm | Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 1001
Elaheh Ahmadi’s research is focused on design, fabrication and characterization of novel (ultra)wide bandgap materials and devices for high power and high frequency applications as well as quantum applications. Ahmadi joined UCSB as an Associate Professor in 2025. Prior to that, she was an Associate Professor at UCLA (2023-2025), and an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan (2018-2023). She has received several awards, including the Young Investigator Award in 2020 from both the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of ScientificResearch. In 2021, she received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and DARPA Young Faculty Award.... (more)
Daniel M. Kuchta, Principal Hardware System Architect, NVIDIA
"Co-Packaged Optical Transceivers for HPC, Data Center, and AI Applications"
Kuchta's Talk – Oct 10 (Fri) @ 2:00 | Engineering Science Building (ESB), Room 1001
Daniel M. Kuchta (IEEE Fellow 2019) is a Principal Hardware System Architect at Nvidia. Previously he was a Research Staff Member in the Communications and Computation Subsystems Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center since 1992. He received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986, 1988, and 1992, respectively, While at IBM Research he worked on high-speed VCSEL characterization, multimode fiber links, and parallel fiber optic link research. (more...)
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”
