Circuit Insights

Circuit Ideas for Extreme Energy Efficiency

Biography

Taekwang Jang received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from KAIST, Korea, in 2006 and 2008, respectively. From 2008 to 2013, he worked at Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., Yongin, Korea, focusing on mixed-signal circuit design, including analog and all-digital phase-locked loops for communication systems and mobile processors. In 2017, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the same institution. In 2018, he joined ETH Zürich as an assistant professor and is leading the Energy-Efficient Circuits and Intelligent Systems group. He is also a member of the Competence Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Science, and the chair of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, Switzerland chapter.

His research focuses on circuits and systems for highly energy-constrained applications such as wireless sensor nodes and biomedical interfaces. Essential building blocks such as a sensor interface, energy harvester, power converter, communication transceiver, frequency synthesizer, and data converters are his primary interests. He holds 15 patents and has (co)authored more than 80 peer-reviewed conferences and journal articles. He is the recipient of the 2024 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society New Frontier Award, the SNSF Starting Grant, the IEEE ISSCC 2021 and 2022 Jan Van Vessem Award for Outstanding European Paper, the IEEE ISSCC 2022 Outstanding Forum Speaker Award, and the 2009 IEEE CAS Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award. Since 2022, he has been a TPC member of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), IMMD Subcommittee, and IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (ASSCC), Analog Subcommittee. He also chaired the 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Radio-Frequency Integration Technology (RFIT), Frequency Generation Subcommittee. Since 2023, he has been serving as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC) and was appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Solid-State Circuits Society in 2024.

Circuits for Data Conversion

Biography

Pieter Harpe received the MSc and PhD degrees from the Eindhoven University of Technology, and then he worked for several years at imec on ultra low-power ADCs. In 2011, he joined Eindhoven University of Technology where he is currently an Associate Professor and lead of the Resource Efficient Electronics Lab. 

His main activities are on low-power analog and mixed-signal circuits.

Dr. Harpe is TPC member for ISSCC and A-SSCC, Associate Editor for TCAS-I, SSCS AdCom Member-at-Large and SSCS Distinguished Lecturer.

Introduction to Domain-Specific Accelerators

Biography

Aoyang Zhang is currently an Assistant Professor with the School of Integrated Circuits at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He received the B.S. degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2014 and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 2020. From 2021 to 2023, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. In 2023, he joined Tsinghua university where he is currently an assistant professor.

His current research interests include energy efficient reconfigurable RF/mixed-signal integrated circuits design, new computing platforms with analog and mixed-signal circuits, and hardware security circuits. Dr. Zhang was the recipient of the 2021 USC Best Dissertation Award in Electrical Engineering, 2020-2021 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Predoctoral achievement award, Ming Hsieh Institute Scholar in 2020, IEEE SSCS Student Travel Grant Award (STGA) in 2018, Best Bachelor Thesis Award in 2014, and the first prize of Chinese National Mathematical Competition in 2010.

Introduction to CMOS Image Sensors

Biography

Chih-Cheng Hsieh received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Electronics Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 1990, 1991, and 1997, respectively.,From 1999 to 2007, he was with an IC Design House, Pixart Imaging Inc., Hsinchu. He led the Mixed-Mode IC Department, as a Senior Manager and was involved in the development of CMOS image sensor ICs for PC, consumer, and mobile phone applications. In 2007, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, where he is currently a Full Professor. His current research interests include low-voltage low-power smart CMOS image sensor IC, ADC, and mixed-mode IC development for artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), biomedical, space, robot, and customized applications.,Dr. Hsieh serves as a TPC member of ISSCC and A-SSCC, and an Associate Editor of IEEE Solid–State Circuit Letters (SSC-L) and IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (CASM). He was the SSCS Taipei Chapter Chair and the Student Branch Counselor of NTHU, Taiwan.

Introduction to Biomedical Circuits

Biography

Minkyu Je received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 1996, 1998, and 2003, respectively. In 2003, he joined Samsung Electronics, Korea, as a Senior Engineer. From 2006 to 2013, he was with the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. From 2011 to 2013, he led the Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory at IME as a Department Head. He was also a Program Director of NeuroDevices Program under A*STAR Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) from 2011 to 2013. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering at Daegu Gyenogbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Korea from 2014 to 2015. Since 2016, he has been an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea.

His main research areas are advanced IC platform development including smart sensor interface ICs, ultra-low-power wireless communication ICs, high-efficiency energy supply and management ICs, ultra-low-power timing ICs, resource-constrained computing ICs, as well as microsystem integration leveraging the advanced IC platform for emerging applications such as intelligent miniature biomedical devices, ubiquitous wireless sensor nodes, and future mobile devices. He is an editor of 1 book, an author of 6 book chapters, and has more than 360 peer-reviewed international conference and journal publications in the areas of sensor interface IC, wireless IC, biomedical microsystem, 3D IC, device modeling, and nanoelectronics. He also has more than 70 patents issued or filed. He has served on the Technical Program Committee and Organizing Committee for various international conferences, symposiums, and workshops including IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC), and IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits (SOVC). He has also been a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society from 2020 to 2022.