Prof Joyce Poon (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Moore’s Law is ending. This opens new opportunities for unconventional microsystems and nanodevices that can fundamentally transform computing beyond the next 10 to 20 years. Much inspiration can be drawn from the human brain, which is orders of magnitudes more power efficient than today’s computers for many cognitive tasks. Integrated photonics on silicon is an important technology for the beyond Moore era. In this talk, I will begin by describing how foundry silicon integrated photonics enable high performance computing and communication systems. Next, I will describe electronic and optoelectronic nanodevices with steep turn-on characteristics using phase-change materials. Finally, I will describe nanophotonic-based neurotechnology for brain-activity mapping. In the long term, these efforts unite to enable new types of brain-inspired (i.e., neuromorphic) computing systems and interfaces to the brain.