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ESE 2024 Jack Keil Wolf Lecture – “Army of Ants: The Power of Working in Concert”
November 15 at 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Synchronized operation of a large number of similar entities can generate behavior that cannot be expected from single one. This principle combined with the physical concept of coherence in waves enables creation of programmable 3-dimensional focal points that can be used to enable many applications such as wireless energy transfer at distance on earth and even from space, flat lensless projectors and cameras, and various other present and future applications. It can manifest itself in the form of phased arrays and focusing arrays with an ensemble of synchronized wave generating or receiving elements. While the individual element behavior may be rather unremarkable, such systems can lead to rich and useful behaviors. We will go through a journey based on this principle and a progression of its potential applications in an increasing order of outlandishness.
Ali Hajimiri
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering, Director of Caltech Holistic Integrated Circuit Laboratory, and co-Director of the Space-based Solar Power Project, Caltech
Prof. Ali Hajimiri received his B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Stanford University. Before joining the Faculty of Caltech, he worked for Bell Laboratories, Sun Microsystems, and Signetics (Philips Semiconductor). In 1998, he joined the Faculty of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, where he is Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering, Director of Caltech Holistic Integrated Circuit Laboratory, and co-Director of the Space-based Solar Power Project. His research interests are high-speed and high-frequency electronics and photonics integrated circuits for applications in sensors, photonics, communication, wireless energy transfer, and biomedical devices.
He is a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Prof. Hajimiri was selected to the TR35 top innovator’s list. He is also a Fellow of IEEE and has served as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State and Microwave Societies. He won the Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Caltech’s most prestigious teaching honor, as well as Caltech’s Graduate Students Council Teaching and Mentoring award. He is also three-times winner of the Associated Students of Caltech (ASCIT) Undergraduate Excellence in Teaching Award. He was the Gold medal winner of the National Physics Competition and the Bronze Medal winner of the 21st International Physics Olympiad, Groningen, Netherlands. He was a co-recipient of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits Best Paper Award, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Jack Kilby Outstanding Paper Award, a co-recipient of RFIC best paper award, a two-time co-recipient of CICC best paper award, and a three-time winner of the IBM faculty partnership award as well as National Science Foundation CAREER award and Okawa Foundation award. He co-founded Axiom Microdevices Inc., whose fully-integrated CMOS PA has shipped around 400,000,000 units, and was acquired by Skyworks Inc.
He serves on the Technical Program Committee of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) as the chair of the technology directions sub-committee, and has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems (TCAS): Part-II, a member of the Technical Program Committees of the International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, and Guest Editorial Board of Transactions of Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICE).