Events

Nov 1 - Nov 8, 2020

Design and topological optimization of nanophotonic devices

Ronghui Lin, Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Nov 2, 10:30 - 12:30

KAUST

Nanophotonic research has a huge influence on various aspects of modern society, such as communication, commercial products, biochemistry, and information processing. A central topic in the research of nanophotonics is the geometrical optimization of the nanostructures since the geometries are deeply related to the Mie resonances and the localized surface plasmon resonances in dielectric and metallic nanomaterials. When many nanostructures are assembled to form a metamaterial, the tuning of the geometrical parameters can bring even more profound effects, such as bound states in the continuum (BIC) with infinite quality factors (Q factors). Moreover, with the development of nanofabrication technologies, there is a trend of integrating nanostructures in the vertical direction, which provides more degrees of freedom for controlling the device performance and functionality. In this dissertation, we explore how the geometrical changes of the nanostructures influence the nanophotonic devices, furthermore, we utilize machine learning techniques to actively control the topologies of the devices to enhance their performances.

Oct 25 - Nov 8, 2020

Ultraviolet semiconductor technologies for COVID-19 and beyond

Xiaohang Li, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Nov 1, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

Ultraviolet semiconductor technologies COVID-19

COVID-19 is a wake-up call for public health and safety. Since the pandemic began, the ultraviolet (UV) technologies have been widely employed in numerous places to contain and eliminate the viruses. Although UV light is nonchemical and does not contaminate the environment, however, most of the UV light today comes from the toxic mercury lamps. In our lab and many institutions in the world, researchers are developing semiconductor-based UV technologies that are compact, reliable, and nontoxic. This seminar shows the research background and briefly discusses the research progress made by our team in a few key areas including material growth, physics, and device fabrication for UV lasers, LEDs, and photodetectors.

Oct 25 - Nov 1, 2020

Oct 18 - Nov 1, 2020

Beyond Solid-State Lighting: Miniaturization and Integration of Nitride-based Visible LEDs

Zhe Zhuang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Oct 25, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

Solid-State Lighting Miniaturization Integration Nitride-based Visible LEDs

This talk will give an overview of the research of III-nitride based visible light-emitting diodes (LEDs) from the KAUST Energy Conversion Devices and Materials (ECO Devices) Laboratory (https://ecodevices.kaust.edu.sa/Pages/Overview.aspx). III-nitride based visible LEDs have achieved tremendous success in the field of solid-state lighting and dominated the lighting markets in the past decades. This technique becomes mature, and the luminous efficacy of LED devices approaches the theoretical maximum limit.

Oct 18 - Oct 25, 2020

Oct 11 - Oct 25, 2020

Automatic Biomedical Hypothesis Generation by Learning from Dynamic Graphs

Prof. Xiangliang Zhang

Oct 18, 14:00 - 15:00

KAUST

This talk will introduce two novel models we developed for automatic HG generation in two different settings, positive-negative learning and positive-unlabeled learning. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model on three real-world datasets constructed from biomedical publications.

Oct 11 - Oct 18, 2020

Oct 4 - Oct 18, 2020

MXenes for Electronic and Sensing Applications

Professor Husam Alshareef, Material Science and Engineering, KAUST

Oct 11, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

MXenes Electronic Sensing Applications

This talk will focus on the device applications of MXenes and MXene-derived functional materials. Our group has been developing device concepts that capitalize on the rich and promising properties of MXenes. For example, the excellent electrical conductivity of MXenes makes them good candidates as contact materials electronics (printed, wearable, and stretchable electronics) both as local and global contacts. We have demonstrated that MXenes can be used as electrical contacts in thin-film electronics, CMOS devices, quantum-dot transistors, LEDs, and solar cells.

Oct 4 - Oct 11, 2020

Sep 27 - Oct 11, 2020

Monolithic Integration of InAs Quantum Dot Lasers on Si Substrates

Yating Wan, Postdoctoral fellow at of University of California, Santa Barbara

Oct 4, 18:00 - 19:00

KAUST

monolithic Quantum Dots laser

Here, I will talk about recent advances in the field of QD lasers with a focus on direct growth on Si. Si photonics has found widespread application, particularly for high volume applications and for co-integration with CMOS electronics. I will start with an overview of the field, followed with a summary of device performance and fundamental physics basis for the improved response.
Recent Advances in Sensor Design

Khaled Salama, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Oct 4, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

Recent sensor analog design optimization

In this talk we will discuss the work conducted at KAUST sensors lab and KAUST sensor initiative

Sep 27 - Oct 4, 2020

Sep 20 - Oct 4, 2020

Exploring the Potentials of EM Waves from Body-scale to Nano-communications for Healthcare and Next Generation Wireless Applications

Akram Alomainy, Reader, Antennas and Applied Electromagnetics, Queen Mary University of London

Sep 27, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

healthcare electromagnetic Radio frequency devices Biomedical Engineering

With the advent of commercial products, such as Apple iWatch and Samsung Galaxy Gear, body-centric communication has increasingly garnered the public attention and smoothly translated state-of-the-art research work into reality. However, challenges still remains and these are often fundamental physical hurdles that need to be further explored and investigated to come up with efficient and scalable solutions applicable to many fields and areas. This becomes an important research area when you look at the scale or rather the multiple scales it needs to work at from body-size or larger networks to the nano-scale where there have been lots of interest recently on how to get nano-devices inside tissues and even inside intelligent materials around us. The talk will present recent development in the area of antennas, RF devices and electromagnetic solutions for applications such as healthcare, biomedical engineering and next generation wireless communications. It will look at the challenges from theoretical, numerical and experimental prospective to ensure that proposed concepts and outcomes are of benefit not only to those domains but other beyond such as agricultural technology and smart home and cities.

Sep 20 - Sep 27, 2020

Data-sparse Algorithms for Large-scale Applications on Emerging Architectures

David Keyes, Senior Associate to the President, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Sep 21, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

A traditional goal of algorithmic optimality, squeezing out operations, has been superseded because of evolution in architecture. Algorithms must now squeeze memory, data transfers, and synchronizations, while extra operations on locally cached data cost relatively little time or energy. Hierarchically low-rank matrices realize a rarely achieved combination of optimal storage complexity and high-computational intensity in approximating a wide class of formally dense operators that arise in exascale applications. They may be regarded as algebraic generalizations of the fast multipole method.

Sep 13 - Sep 27, 2020

Gbit/s Visible Light Communications

Boon Ooi, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sep 20, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

Gbit/s Visible light communications

Visible light communication (VLC or LiFi) has been a topic of intense research after the idea was proposed in 2011. To date, a data rate of multiple 100s Mbps has been demonstrated using LED as light source. At KAUST, we are developing the next generation of SSL lighting using visible laser diodes (LDs) and superluminescent diodes (SLDs). Laser diodes and SLDs do not suffer efficiency droop at high current densities. This allows for the design of lamps using a single, small footprint, light-emitting chip operating at high current densities. Using a single chip reduces system costs compared with LEDs because the system uses less material per chip, requires fewer chips, and employs simplified optics and a simplified heat-sink. The chip area required for LED technologies will be significantly reduced using LD/SLD-based solid-state lighting. This technology will also enable highly controllable beams in term of tunable throw distance, tunable color temperature and rendering index. Multiple Gbit/s VLC links have been demonstrated using LD/SLD as transmitters. In this talk, I will focus on the recent progress of visible diode LD/SLD-based lighting technology and high-speed transmitters and receivers for multiple-Gbps VLC and underwater wireless optical communication.

Sep 13 - Sep 20, 2020

Sep 6 - Sep 20, 2020

Research at the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) - Graduate Seminar - ECE

Bernard Ghanem, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sep 13, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

research image Video Understanding Lab IVUL

In this talk, I will give an overview of research done in the Image and Video Understanding Lab (IVUL) at KAUST. At IVUL, we work on topics that are important to the computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML) communities, with emphasis on three research themes: Theme 1 (Video Understanding): We aim to extract meaningful semantic information from large-scale video data by tackling research problems such as object tracking, activity detection, moment retrieval, and language grounding in video. Theme 2 (Visual Computing for Automated Navigation): We develop methodology to enable more accurate, reliable, and robust perception of the visual world for automated navigation applications (e.g. self-driving cars and UAVs). In this theme, we tackle research problems such as object tracking, segmentation, and detection in 3D data, as well as transfer learning from simulation (sim2real). Theme 3 (Fundamentals/Foundations): In this theme, we tackle fundamental research problems in CV and ML that transcend specific applications with focus on deep network theory/analysis (e.g. robustness, certification, and interpretability) and structured optimization methods for large-scale CV/ML problems. Throughout the talk, I will highlight some of the interesting projects at IVUL to encourage students to get interested in the research field.

Sep 6 - Sep 13, 2020

Aug 30 - Sep 13, 2020

Flexible, Wearable, Disposable Wireless Communication and Sensing Systems Through Additive Manufacturing - 2020

Atif Shamim, Program Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sep 6, 12:00 - 13:00

KAUST

flexible Wearable disposable Wireless communication Sensing Systems additive manufacturing

With the advent of wearable sensors and internet of things (IoT), there is a new focus on electronics which can be bent so that they can be worn or mounted on non-planar objects. Due to large volume (billions of devices), there is a requirement that the cost is extremely low, to the extent that they become disposable. The flexible and low-cost aspects can be addressed through additive manufacturing technologies such as inkjet, screen and 3D printing. This talk introduces additive manufacturing as an emerging technique to realize low cost, flexible and wearable wireless communication and sensing systems. The ability to print electronics on unconventional mediums such as plastics, papers, and textiles has opened up a plethora of new applications. In this talk, various innovative antenna and sensor designs will be shown which have been realized through additive manufacturing. A multilayer process will be presented where dielectrics are also printed in addition to the metallic parts, thus demonstrating fully printed components. Many new functional inks and their use in tunable and reconfigurable components will be shown. In the end, many system level examples of wireless sensing applications will be shown. The promising results of these designs indicate that the day when electronics can be printed like newspapers and magazines through roll-to-roll and reel-to-reel printing is not far away.

Aug 30 - Sep 6, 2020