Asif Khan has been chosen for a DARPA Young Faculty Award. Khan is an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), where he has been on the faculty since 2017.

Khan is receiving this award for his research on ferroelectric field-effect transistors for embedded non-volatile memory applications. Ferroelectric field-effect transistors is one of the most-promising device technologies for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) hardware, due to its energy efficiency and compatibility with high-volume semiconductor manufacturing. The project will focus on solving the critical voltage problem of this device technology, by identifying and implementing new strategies for interface defect reduction in and the downscaling of the ferroelectric gate-dielectric stack. 

Khan works on advanced semiconductor devices that will shape the future of computing in the post-scaling era. His research group currently focuses on ferroelectric devices in all aspects ranging from materials physics, growth, and electron microscopy to device fabrication, all the way to ferroelectric circuits and systems for AI/ML/data-centric applications.

His early career work led to the first experimental proof-of-concept demonstration of a physical phenomenon, namely the negative capacitance, in ferroelectric materials, which can reduce the power dissipation in electronic devices below the “fundamental” thermodynamic limit. Negative capacitance is currently a vibrant research area in materials science, condensed matter physics, and electrical engineering, and it is being pursued by all major semiconductor companies for advanced transistor technologies.

In the past, Khan has received multiple awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2021), the Intel Rising Star Award (2020), Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (2012), TSMC Outstanding Student Research Award (2011), and the University Gold Medal from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (2011). He was also named to the Center for Teaching and Learning Class of 1934 CIOS Honor Roll for his outstanding teaching in ECE8863 Quantum Computing Devices and Hardware in Fall 2020.

Khan’s group currently consists of seven graduate students and two research staff members. They publish in flagship microelectronics conferences, such as the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) and the Symposium on VLSI Technology, and in journals including IEEE Electron Device Letters, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Nature Electronics, Nature Materials, and Nano Letters. His students received multiple international and Institute-level awards, including the IEEE EDS Masters Student Fellowship (Prasanna Ravindran, 2020) and the Georgia Tech ECE's Colonel Oscar P. Cleaver Award (Nujhat Tasneem in 2018 and Zheng Wang in 2017) for achieving the highest score on the ECE Ph.D. preliminary examination, which was the criteria for the award up to 2018.

The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech has announced the winners for the 2018 Spring Seed Grant Awards. The primary purpose of the IEN Seed Grant is to give first or second year graduate students in various disciplines working on original and un-funded research in micro- and nano-scale projects the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to accessing the high-level fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools in the labs, the students will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and to use the consultation services provided by research staff members of the IEN Advanced Technology Team.  In addition, the Seed Grant program gives faculty with novel research topics the ability to develop preliminary data in order to pursue follow-up funding sources.

Over the course of five years, this grant program has seeded forty-five projects with forty-nine students working in ten different schools in COE and COS, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute and 2 external projects.

The 4 winning projects, from a diverse group of engineering disciplines, were awarded a six-month block of IEN cleanroom and lab access time. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of IEN, the projects that will be enabled by the grants include research in materials, biomedicine, energy production, and microelectronics packaging applications.

The Spring 2018 IEN Seed Grant Award winners are:

• Jiang Chen (PI Ben Wang - MSE): Validation and Characterization of Living Cell Grafting on Polycaprolactone Fibers for Textile Tissue Engineering
• Fatima Chrit (PI Alexander Alexeev - ME): Microfluidic Adhesion-based Sorting of Biological Cells
• Zifei Sun (PI Gleb Yushin - MSE): FeOx Coated FeF3-C Nanofibers as Free-standing Cathodes for Sodium- Ion Batteries
• Ting Wang (PI Xing Xie - Civil and Environmental Engineering): Development of Lab-on-a-Chip Devices for the Mechanisms Study of Cell Transportation and Bacteria Inactivation in a Non-Uniform Electric Field

Awardees will present the results of their research efforts at the annual IEN User Day in 2019.

Ajeet Rohatgi has been named as a recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, located in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. This award is the highest given by IIT Kanpur to its alumni in recognition of their achievements. Rohatgi graduated from the Institute with his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering in 1971.

Rohatgi is a Regents’ Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and he holds the John H. Weitnauer, Jr. Chair in the College of Engineering and is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. Rohatgi was chosen for this award for his academic and entrepreneurial excellence and for his exemplary contributions in the field of renewable energy and photovoltaic (PV) technology. 

With a career spanning 34 years at Georgia Tech, Rohatgi has built a top-notch photovoltaics (PV) program where none previously existed with the establishment of the University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaics Research and Education in 1992. He and his team have produced several world-record, high-efficiency solar cells. 

In 1996, Rohatgi’s research group designed and built the world’s largest (at the time) rooftop PV system for the Olympic Natatorium on the Georgia Tech campus. The system is still in operation today for the campus swimming and diving center. He also founded Suniva, Inc., a company known for its research, development, and manufacturing of high-efficiency crystalline solar cells. 

Rohatgi has been internationally recognized for his excellence in research, education, commercialization efforts, and professional society leadership in the PV and energy arenas. He is an IEEE Fellow and has published over 500 technical papers and has been issued 41 patents. Prior to his arrival at Georgia Tech, he was named a Westinghouse Fellow in 1984 for his achievements in the design and development of high-efficiency silicon solar cells. 

In 1996, Rohatgi received the Georgia Tech Distinguished Professor Award for excellence in teaching, research, and service. He received the prestigious IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference William Cherry Award and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory/Department of Energy Rappaport Award in 2003 for his outstanding contributions to the field of photovoltaics. In 2009, he received the Environmental Protection Agency Climate Protection Award, and the American Solar Energy Society Hoyt Clark Hottel Award for outstanding educator and innovator in the field of photovoltaics.

In 2009, Rohatgi was asked to join a delegation of clean technology entrepreneurs at the White House in support of President Barack Obama’s efforts to increase R&D funding in this area. He was also named a Champion of PV by Renewable Energy World magazine. In 2015, he was inducted as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.