Faculty

Professor Shanhui Fan has been selected as a 2021 Simons Investigator in Physics. Simons Investigators are outstanding theoretical scientists who receive a stable base of research support from the foundation, enabling them to undertake the long-term study of fundamental questions. The intent of the Simons Investigators in Mathematics, Physics, Astrophysics and Computer Science programs is to support outstanding theoretical scientists in their most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field and effectively mentoring junior scientists. Congratulations to all of the 2021 Simons Investigators! Simons Foundation News announcement

Shanhui works broadly on photonics theory. He has made fundamental contributions in temporal coupled mode theory, non-reciprocity as induced by dynamic modulation, photonic gauge potentials, waveguide quantum electrodynamics, solar cell light trapping theory and daytime radiative cooling. Recently, he has been working on concepts of synthetic dimensions as a way to explore Hermitian and non-Hermitian topological physics in photonics.

Excerpted from Simons Foundation, 2021 Simons Investigators

Please join us in congratulating Shanhui for this outstanding recognition!

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• Shanhui Fan's Radiative Cooling

Krishna's Award Presentation

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Professor Bill Dally and Emerita Professor Andrea Goldsmith have been selected to serve on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council consists of distinguished individuals from sectors outside of the Federal Government who advise the President on policy matters where the understanding of science, technology, and innovation is key.

PCAST develops evidence-based recommendations for the President on matters involving science, technology, and innovation policy, as well as on matters involving scientific and technological information that is needed to inform policy affecting the economy, worker empowerment, education, energy, the environment, public health, national and homeland security, racial equity, and other topics.

Not only are its members brilliant and esteemed, they represent the most diverse PCAST in U.S. history. PCAST is traditionally co-chaired by the President's Science Advisor and 1-2 external co-chairs. Since its inception, no women have served as co-chairs. President Biden's PCAST has two women co-chairs. Furthermore, this PCAST reflects the President's commitment to build an Administration that truly looks like America. For the first time ever, women make up half of PCAST and people of color and immigrants make up more than one-third of PCAST. Its diversity will help the council bring to bear a wide range of perspectives to address the nation's most pressing opportunities and challenges, so that science, technology, and engineering benefits all Americans.

Please join us in congratulating Bill and Andrea!

Excerpted from Whitehouse.gov, "President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology"

For decades, the general-purpose central processing unit—the CPU—has been the workhorse of the computer industry. It could handle any task—literally—even if most of those capabilities were unnecessary.

This model was all well and good as chips grew smaller, faster and more efficient by the day, but less so as the pace of progress has slowed, says Professor Priyanka Raina, an expert in chip design. Priyanka says that to keep chips on their ever-improving trajectory, chip makers have shifted focus to chips that do specific tasks very well. The graphics processing unit (GPU), which handles the intense mathematics necessary for video and gaming graphics, is a perfect example.

Soon, there’ll be a faster, more efficient chip for every task, but it’ll take industry-wide cooperation to get there, as Priyanka tells listeners to this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

Source: The Future of Everything Series, "Priyanka Raina: How computer chips get speedier through specialization."

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• Priyanka Raina recognized as an Intel Rising Star Faculty, 2021, September 2021
• Additional episodes of The Future of Everything welcomes Kwabena Boahen, Jelena Vuckovic, David Miller, Kunle Olukotun, and Balaji Prabhakar

Congratulations to Professor Priyanka Raina for being recognized as an Intel 2021 Rising Star Faculty. The Intel® Rising Star Faculty Award (RSA) program has selected ten promising early-career academic researchers who lead some of the most important technology research of our time. The chosen faculty members work with disruptive technologies that have the potential to advance the future of computing in fields encompassing computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, material science, and chemical engineering.

The program recognizes community members who are doing exceptional work in the field and facilitates long-term collaborative relationships with senior technical leaders at Intel. Recipients of this award are also distinguished for exemplifying innovative teaching methods and increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computer science and engineering.

The key technology areas under investigation by selected faculty include cybersecurity, hardware security, nanotechnology, semiconductor device technologies, neuromorphic computing, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and memory management.

This year's winners include esteemed faculty at the following institutions:

• Carnegie Mellon University
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Arizona State University
• Stanford University
• University of Texas at Austin
• Cornell University
• University of Pennsylvania
• Oregon State University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Indian Institute of Science

Please join us in congratulating Priyanka and all the RSA winners for 2021!

Excerpted from "Intel 2021Rising Star Faculty Award..."

Professor Eric Pop's lab - Pop Lab - took a long shot adapting phase-change memory (PCM) to plastic substrates – turns out the energy-efficiency significantly improved compared to PCM on conventional silicon substrates.

Phase change materials leverage changes in structure into differences in electrical resistance that are attractive for computer memory and processing applications. Khan et al. developed a flexible phase change memory device with layers of antimony telluride and germanium telluride deposited directly on a flexible polyimide substrate. The device shows multilevel operation with low switching current density. The combination of phase change and flexible mechanical properties is attractive for the large number of emerging applications for flexible electronics.

"It's the same atoms as conventional phase-change memory but in beautiful striped alternating thin layers, also known as a superlattice," says Professor Eric Pop.

Eric's group put arrays of memory cells made of superlattices of alternating layers of antimony telluride and germanium telluride on flexible plastic substrates. They were curious whether they could make it work—flexible memory is a key enabling technology for electronic skin, lightweight environmental sensors, and other unconventional electronics. Once grad student Asir Intisar Khan and postdoc Alwin Daus figured out how to make these devices at temperatures that would not melt the polyimide substrate, the researchers were surprised by what they found.

"The flexible substrate provides an extra advantage we did not anticipate," reports Eric Pop. The current density required to switch the flexible memory cells is 10 to 100x lower than any previously reported phase-change memory, and the memory cells maintain their performance when the substrate is bent. After seeing the results, the team was "scrambling," he continues. "Why is this better?" The Stanford group believes that the layers in the superlattice, the cell's "pore-like" design, as well as the insulating properties of the plastic substrate, help confine the energy applied to the memory cells, making them heat up more efficiently and spurring a phase change at lower electrical currents.

Excerpted from c&en (Chemical & Engineering News), "Flexible memory uses less power" and IEEE Spectrum, "This Memory Tech Is Better When It's Bendy" 

• Read their paper in Science, "Ultralow–switching current density multilevel phase-change memory on a flexible substrate," 10 September, 2021.  

• Related reports: EurekAlert!, SCIENMAG, TechXplore, eurasiareview, MIRAGE, The Hack Posts, NEWSBREAK, TechnoSports, MINNEWS, Aroged,  Insider Voice,  California18, sciencesprings including some social media postings.

• Stanford Energy, "Stanford discovery could pave the way to ultrafast, energy-efficient computing".

Congratulations to Professor Robert M. Gray for being selected as a 2020 Okawa Prize Winner. His citation reads, for "seminal research in information coding theory and data compression, and enormous contributions to the promotion of diversity in engineering education."

The Okawa Prize is intended to pay tribute to and make public recognition of persons who have made outstanding contributions to the research, technological development and business in the information and telecommunications fields internationally.

Please join us in congratulating Bob on this meaningful recognition and his continued contributions to electrical engineering and education.

You can learn more about his seminal research and amazing efforts on improving diversity in engineering from his website ee.stanford.edu/~gray.

Professor Shanhui Fan and EE alum, Professor Aaswath Raman (UCLA) are using their technology to potentially reduce heat-related deaths. As higher temperatures become more frequent, the use of air conditioning increases, resulting in a cycle of baking the planet in an attempt to keep people cool.

Pictured are Aaswath Raman as a graduate student (on the left) with Professor Shanhui Fan in 2011.

Shanhui and Aaswath developed a film that was both highly reflective of visible light—so it wouldn't warm up in the sun—and an excellent emitter of infrared radiation at just the right wavelengths to pass through the atmosphere unimpeded. If the film covered the hood of a car, it would conduct heat away from the hood, cooling it without using any electricity.

Since they published their findings in 2014, other researchers have designed paints, gels, and wood that can remain cool in daylight. In 2020, their film was installed on a supermarket roof, resulting in energy savings of 15-20 percent.

The film is currently being tested on a few bus shelters in Tempe, Arizona. Preliminary results show that the roofs can be 30 degrees cooler than the surrounding air.

Today, Professor Aaswath Raman is involved in a UCLA project called Heat Resistant Los Angeles. "The idea is, can we go beyond shade?" he says. Historically, cities have focused on providing shade trees, parks, and green belts to help cool urban environments, but such projects often bypass low-income communities and take years to establish. Raman envisions using canopies coated with his film to cool large outdoor spaces; these could be set up quickly at a relatively low cost.

"It's very early days for the project," he says, "so it's still kind of speculative. But I'm hoping in a year or two we'll have some cool results and demos to share."

The World Health Organization estimates that between 1998 and 2017, heat waves killed at least 166,000 people around the world. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rate, deadly heat will put more than a billion people at risk by the end of the century.

The technology may ultimately help cool our cities, and it may be able to prevent tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths from the brutal heat waves to come, which would be no small feat. But to cool the whole world, we've known for decades what needs to be done: Leave fossil fuels in the ground.

Excerpted from "This new technology could help cool people down—without electricity"

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Assistant Professor Chelsea Finn and her team designed a neural network system solely for Stanford's programming class. They used techniques that could automate student feedback in other situations, including for classes beyond programming.

Chelsea's system spent hours analyzing examples from old midterms, learning from a decade of possibilities. Then it was ready to learn more. When given just a handful of extra examples from the new exam offered this spring, it could quickly grasp the task at hand.

"It sees many kinds of problems," said PhD candidate Mike Wu. "Then it can adapt to problems it has never seen before."

This spring, the system provided 16,000 pieces of feedback, and students agreed with the feedback 97.9 percent of the time, according to a study by the researchers. By comparison, students agreed with the feedback from human instructors 96.7 percent of the time.

Chelsea Finn is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

Excerpted from The New York Times, "Can A.I. Grade Your Next Test?"

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