Research Areas and Committees

Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, IISc, Bangalore

Research in ESE covers a wide spectrum of topics. There are 4 interview committees. Each
committee has research areas and sub-areas.

Committee Research topics

Sub-area A1: Analog & Digital Chip Design, Neuromorphic Computing and
Machine Learning

Faculty/Lab: http://neuronics.dese.iisc.ac.in/

The central research focus of the NeuRonICS lab is to understand the

principles of brain computation and to apply this understanding in
electronic systems for building intelligent systems. Engineers have a lot to
learn about computation from the brain, which has evolved over billions of
years to solve difficult engineering problems. Efficient, parallel, low-power
computation is a hallmark of the brain, and to be able to replicate this in
electronic systems is one of the goals of the lab. Research interests of the lab
span a broad range of subjects such as ASIC/FPGA VLSI design, analog IC
design, brain-inspired algorithms, Edge Computing, machine learning, and
event-based sensors.
Committee–A
Sub-area A2: Digital Chip Design, Circuits and Systems for Cryptography,
Hardware Security, Quantum-Inspired Computing, Hardware Accelerators

Faculty/Lab: https://labs.dese.iisc.ac.in/sinesyslab
Lab Information Brochure: https://bit.ly/sinesyslabinfo

SINESys Lab is involved in the design of efficient integrated system solutions

for emerging applications such as post-quantum cryptography, computation
on encrypted data, secure machine learning, quantum-inspired computing,
blockchain, side-channel security, encryption and authentication protocols.
Our research spans across circuits, architectures and algorithms - with ASIC
& FPGA design along with hardware-software co-design - enabling us to
translate theory into practical systems.

In SINESys Lab, students have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge

research topics, collaborate with leading academia/industry partners and
gain valuable technical skills in chip design, electronic systems, hardware
implementation, cyber security, machine learning and emerging compute
paradigms.

The only prerequisites are good understanding of digital electronics along

with mathematical aptitude. No prior background in cryptography, cyber
security, machine learning or quantum computation is required.
Sub-area A3: Digital and Mixed-signal VLSI design, Efficient computation for
Machine Learning (ML) applications, Memory Design, In-memory computing
and beyond von Neumann architectures, Securing computing platforms,
Hardware accelerators for Neural Networks (NN)

Faculty: http://labs.dese.iisc.ac.in/viveka
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivekakonandur/

We at EC&IS Lab, focus on building efficient systems to meet the increasing

computational demand of future systems. This ranges from building across a
wide range of abstractions from circuit design, chip implementation, and
embedded systems along with necessary software framework. Areas of focus
are motivated by challenges in the industry, offering plenty of collaborative
opportunities. Exploratory work using FPGAs is used for feasibility studies,
offering quick turnaround times for system modeling and testing. Extensive
analysis and simulations are used to verify designs with promising ideas
implemented in competitive technologies for silicon demonstrations and
validation. Leveraging the experience of designing, fabricating, and testing
systems in technologies from 180nm to 22nm, we envision driving a future
where we maximize positive human impact through technology while living
in synergy with nature.

Sub-area A4: Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based Devices and

Semiconductor Device Manufacturing,
Advanced Healthcare Technologies,
Design, Modeling, Simulation, Fabrication, and Characterization of Sensors &
Transducers for Biomedical Engineering Applications

Faculty/Lab: https://labs.dese.iisc.ac.in/beeslab/

BEES Lab and NANOFAB for Advanced Microsystems and Biomedical

Devices for Clinical Research focus on developing novel biosensors,
biomedical devices, and healthcare solutions by combining expertise in
micro and nanofabrication, biomedical engineering, electronic system
design, and additive manufacturing to solve problems in biology and
medicine. The research involves minimally invasive and non-invasive
technologies with an emphasis on but not limited to drug delivery, cancer
diagnosis (brain, breast, head, and neck), e-nose (diabetes, breast cancer
screening), brain-computer interface (implantable devices), and
neuroprotective therapies for acute stroke and epilepsy. All the research
projects are executed in close collaboration with clinicians (neurosurgeons,
cardiothoracic surgeons, once surgeons, pediatric surgeons, neonatologists,
ENT surgeons, liver transplant surgeons, pathologists, Head & Neck
surgeons) from the country and abroad. The lab resource comprises a class
100/1000 cleanroom with advanced microfabrication capabilities, including
experimental neurophysiology, characterization and experimentation
laboratory, and a computational facility. The lab is well-suited for candidates
interested in multidisciplinary research and looking to work in a dynamic
environment.
 Power Electronics and Drives

http://surya.dese.iisc.ac.in/lu/
Committee–B
 Drives for e-mobility applications: Multilevel converters, inverters,
bidirectionality, IoT based converters, Motor design, Special motors
and electromechanical systems
 Power converters for interfacing renewable energy to power grid,
energy internet. Magnetics for LV to HV conversion
 Magnetics for power conversion, amplification, series and shunt
compensation, mmf control, special machines

Committee–C Nanoelectronics / Microelectronics / Semiconductor Physics / Solid State

Physics

Sub-Area C1: Experimental Nanoelectronics and Semiconductor Technology

Faculty/Lab: http://mayank.dese.iisc.ac.in/

Broad research areas are:

 Design, simulation, fabrication, characterization, modelling and

reliability physics of nanoscale / nanoelectronics and power
semiconductor devices.
 Nanoscale / nanoelectronics devices: Graphene FETs, 2D material
(MoS2, WS2, WSe2, MoSe2, Phosphorene, h-BN) based electronic and
optoelectronic devices. Power semiconductor device research
includes Gallium Nitride HEMTs and Si LDMOS devices.
 Neuromorphic Devices and Novel Memory devices
 Design and Simulation includes Technology CAD (TCAD) as well
Density Functional Theory (DFT) based computations.
 THz devices and one atom thick circuits
 Device fabrication and characterization includes full transistor
fabrication using state-of-the-art cleanroom infrastructure and its
characterization / testing using one of its kind characterization
facility.
 Modelling includes exploration of unique experimental observations
using TCAD and DFT tools.
 Reliability investigation includes exploration of electron-phonon
transport at nano-second time scale in nanoelectronics devices, role
of phonon in graphene, 2D material and HEMT device degradation
and failure.
 Fundamental scientific explorations in nanoscale devices / exploring
physics at the nanoscale
Sub-Area C2: Computational Nanoelectronics

Faculty/Lab: https://faculty.dese.iisc.ac.in/santanu/
https://labs.dese.iisc.ac.in/nsdrl/

At the moment, our lab is working on modelling 2D material-based

nanoelectronic devices, such as the more standard transistor and the newer
memristor. We work on a technique called "material-device-circuit co-
modeling," in which we try to guess how well a circuit will work by looking
at the crystallographic informaton of 2D materials. There are many types of
computing techniques that students will learn, such as first-principles based
atomistic simulation, force-field development, Monte-Carlo techniques,
quantum transport modelling, compact modelling, and implementation in
SPICE. Many these will require mastering GPU based high-performance
computing. In addition to using off-the-shelf software, students are expected
to come up with their own model, method, or code.

Sub-area C3: Analog and mixed signal IC design, Sensor systems in silicon
photonic and nano-electronic platform.

Faculty/Lab: https://iiscprofiles.irins.org/profile/218234

There is an ever-increasing demand for lower cost, lower power and higher
performance sensor systems driven by the proliferations in diverse
application areas – consumer electronics, automation, environmental
monitoring, space exploration to name a few. Sensor systems using custom
ICs meet these stringent requirements while achieving a small form factor.
In our lab, we will focus on two avenues for the sensor development – a)
integrated silicon photonics and b) nano-electronic devices using graphene
and other 2D materials. The control and signal processing would be
developed using CMOS analog and mixed signal integrated circuits. We
would take a holistic approach involving understanding of the sensor
physics and architectural design of the associated electronics that can often
be more rewarding than a traditional partitioned approach of sensor and
electronic signal chain design.

Broadly our research interests are:

 Sensors – modeling, design, fabrication and characterization

 Photonic integrated circuits – component development and system
design
 Analog and mixed signal integrated circuits – architecture
development and IC design
 Sub-area C4: Circuits and Security Research

Faculty/Lab: https://labs.dese.iisc.ac.in/csrl/

The Circuits and Security Research Lab (CSRL) broadly focuses on designing
energy-efficient and secure communication and computation for IoT devices
& systems. We aim to solve fundamental problems in the domain of
hardware security and biomedical circuits and systems primarily focusing
on innovations in the design of mixed-signal ICs and FPGAs.

To summarize, the key research areas are:

· Design of low power circuits/system architecture for security

· Biomedical applications and IC design

· Circuits and systems for the Internet of Bodies

· Quantum circuit modeling · Machine-learning applications for circuits and

security

Sub-area D1: Networks and Cyber Physical Systems:

 Next Generation Wireless Networks

 Cyber Physical Systems, e.g., Tactile Internet and Smart Grids etc
 Data, Centres and Cloud Computing
 Information Centric Networking
 Distributed Machine Learning over Networks
 Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization
 Time Sensitive and Deterministic, Networking
 Multi-Agent Networked Systems, e.g., Robotic Systems

Sub-area D2: Signal and Information Processing

 Physical Data Storage: Modeling, Signal processing, Coding/

information-theoretic aspects of emerging nano-memory
technologies, such as magnetic hard disks, flash memories, phase
change memories, memristors etc. including VLSI architectures
 Quantum information processing: All aspects of coding, information
theory and signal processing towards quantum storage and
Committee–D transmission
 Mathematical biology, neural networks, and learning systems: Part of
AI
 Music signal processing