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 Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series (2026-2027)
Austin Minnich, Professor, Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology
“Atomic Layer Etching of Electronic and Quantum Materials for Revolutionary Solid-state Technologies"
Minnich's Talk – Oct 9 (Fri) @ 2:00pm | Engineering Science Bldg (ESB), Room 1001
Austin Minnich is Deputy Division Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and a Professor in Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in 2006 and his PhD from MIT in 2011, after which he started his position at Caltech. He has received a number of awards, including the 2013 NSF CAREER Award, 2015 ONR Young Investigator Award, 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and a 2025 NSF Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award. His research interests include atomic layer processing and electronic and photonic devices.
Past Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series (2026-2027)
Peyman Milanfar, Distinguished Scientist, Google
“Reinventing the Camera: AI and the Future of Imaging"
Milanfar's Talk – Sep 25 (Fri) @ 2:00pm | Harold Frank Hall (HFH), Room 1132 (CS Conf. Room)
Peyman Milanfar is a Distinguished Scientist at Google, leading foundational research and technical direction for Computational Imaging. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Prior to Google, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Santa Cruz for 15 years, two of those as Associate Dean for Research. From 2012-2014 he was on leave at Google-x, where he helped develop the imaging pipeline for Google Glass. Over the last decade, Peyman has spearheaded the research and development of several core imaging technologies that are used in many products at Google... (more)
Past Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series (2026-2027)
Past ECE Seminar Series Distinguished Lectures & Talks (2025-26)
ECE Distinguished Lectures at the ECE Seminar Series
- Suman Banerjee, Prof, CS, UW Madison – "Lightweight Edge AI for Sustainability, Spectrum Sensing, Public Safety, & More"
- Mark Saffman, Prof, UW Madison – "Architecting a neutral atom quantum computer: the cost of connectivity"
- Brian Giera, Dir., Data Science Inst., LLNL – "Digital Twins for Inspection of Direct Ink Write Additive Manufacturing"
- Rose Yu, Assoc Prof, CSE, UCSD – "Towards AI Co-Scientists: Agentic Foundation Models for Physical Universe”
- Yasaman Ghasempour, Ass't Prof, ECE, Princeton – “Physics-guided Wireless Communication and Sensing above 100 GHz”
- Mark Rodwell, Dist Prof, ECE, UCSB – “100-300 GHz Wireless: transistors, ICs, systems”
- Aarno Pärssinen, Prof, IT and EE, U of Oulu – “6G from Early Research Towards Commercialization”
- Jeff Wittich, CPO, Ampere – "Silicon to Strategy: Lessons from Building Products, Platforms, and Companies"
- Tao Pang, Roboticist, Robotics & AI Inst. – "Efficient Planning and Learning for Contact-rich Manipulation Via Structured Exploration"
- Mina Rais-Zadeh, Group Sup., JPL – "MEMS and Microsystems for Space Applications"
- Teemu Roos, Prof, CS, U of Helsinki – "Vector Search: High Throughput and Robust Query Processing and Modern Benchmarks"
- Elaheh Ahmadi, Assoc Prof, ECE, UCSB – "Novel Devices for Emerging Applications through Materials Innovations"
- Daniel M. Kuchta, Princ. Hardware Sys Architect, NVIDIA – "Co-Packaged Optical Transceivers for HPC, Data Center, and AI Applications"
ECE Seminar Series Talks
- Xin (Eric) Wang, Ass't Prof, CS, UCSB – "Building AI Agents that Reason, Act, and Evolve”
- Tobia Marcucci, Ass't Prof, UCSB – "A Tutorial on Graphs of Convex Sets: A New Optimization Framework for Robotics and Control"
- Nuutti Tervo, Visiting Prof, UCSB – "Signal Processing Meets RF Hardware: Compensating RF Nonidealities in Future Wireless Systems"
ECE Graduate Student Association (GSA) Seminar Series
- Four Mini Talks by ECE PhD Students (Umang Garg, Nazerke Turtayeva, Jonathan Tao, Ryan Wixen)
- Six Mini Talks by ECE PhD Students (Andong Hua, David Heim, Bariscan Kurtkaya, Boxun Xu, Anirban Banik, Max Crisafulli)
- Three Mini Talks by ECE PhD Students (Roark Chao, Poorva Shukla, Abdelrahman S. Abdelrahman)
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”
