Big Energy Seminar

BES: Energy-Efficient Intelligent Computing with Emerging Microelectronics

Daniel Morton — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:47:10 +0000

BES: Energy-Efficient Intelligent Computing with Emerging Microelectronics Daniel Morton Thu, 04/09/2026 - 13:47

Event Details

Thursday April 9, 2026 | 3:00 - 4:00 PM

SEEC Sievers Room (S228)

Abstract:

The pursuit of high-performance, energy-efficient artificial intelligence (AI) opens exciting opportunities for emerging semiconductor memories and unconventional architectures. To maximize the potential of emerging computing technologies, innovations across the stack (from devices to architecture) become critical. In this talk, I will present our recent hardware-software co-design efforts in exploiting beyond-complementary-metal-oxide-silicon (CMOS) microelectronics for developing efficient deep neural network (DNN) hardware accelerators. We will investigate how to co-design the emerging microelectronics and crossbar architecture to address two major challenges of compute-in-memory: the analog functional errors and the peripheral overhead of analog-to-digital conversion. Furthermore, we will exploit the device physics of emerging non-volatile memory to enable stochastic and approximate computation, thereby achieving an optimal trade-off between efficiency and accuracy for AI inference. Our device-to-system co-optimization demonstrates exciting opportunities for beyond-CMOS microelectronics in developing the next-generation efficient compute systems for edge sensing and precision agriculture applications.

Biography:

Cheng Wang is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. Cheng received his B.S. degree in Physics from Peking University in 2009 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016, with his dissertation on emerging non-volatile and spintronic memories. Prior to joining Iowa State, Cheng was a Research Scientist at the Center for Brain-inspired Computing Enabling (C-BRIC) at Purdue University. Cheng worked as a Staff R&D Engineer at Seagate Research Center from 2016 to 2019, where he designed high-density magneto-electronic memory and storage technologies. His current research interests include machine learning hardware acceleration and energy-efficient neuromorphic computing with emerging technologies and architectures. He has served on the Technical Program Committee for beyond-CMOS and emerging technologies for IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), and Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, Seagate FRC Technical Award, and Best Paper Awards for the IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing (ICRC) and IEEE Cross-disciplinary Conference on Memory-Centric Computing.

April 2026

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Life Cycle-Based Decision Making for Sustainable Materials and Energy Systems

Daniel Morton — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:39:28 +0000

BES: Life Cycle-Based Decision Making for Sustainable Materials and Energy Systems Daniel Morton Tue, 04/07/2026 - 13:39

Event Details

Tuesday April 7, 2026 | 10:00 - 11:00 AM

SEEC Building Sievers Room (S228)

Abstract:

In this seminar, Dr. Van Roijen will present how life cycle–based approaches can be used to translate complex system dynamics into actionable insights. She will highlight two case studies: (1) developing decarbonization pathways for the petrochemical sector using LCA, and (2) integrating LCA with supply chain and criticality assessments to evaluate trade-offs in renewable energy systems. The talk will emphasize both key findings and transferable methodologies that can be applied across disciplines to better connect scientific analysis with real-world decisions.

Biography:

Dr. Van Roijen is a life cycle analysis (LCA) researcher at the National Laboratory of the Rockies. She earned her B.S. in Chemical and Molecular Engineering from Stony Brook University and her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Davis. Her research focuses on developing and applying analytical frameworks to evaluate trade-offs in materials and energy systems and to support more informed decision-making.

April 2026

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Atoms to Bits: Toward Thermodynamic Intelligence

Daniel Morton — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:26:24 +0000

BES: Atoms to Bits: Toward Thermodynamic Intelligence Daniel Morton Thu, 04/02/2026 - 13:26

Event Details

Thursday April 2, 2026

SEEC Building N224 | 3:00 - 4:00 PM

Abstract:

As transistors approach atomic limits, heat dissipation has become the defining constraint of modern computing. My research asks a different question: can heat itself be used to compute? Using correlated quantum materials such as vanadium dioxide (VO2), we explore how electronic phase transitions driven by the flow of heat and charge, generate nonlinear dynamics that resemble neural behavior.

I will discuss our recent experiments revealing spiking, synchronization, memory, and stochasticity in Mott oscillators, as well as collective switching in thermally coupled device networks. These studies uncover how local phase transition fluctuations and mesoscale heat transport give rise to emergent order and functional computation. By linking atomic-scale phase transitions to network-level information processing, this work outlines a physical pathway from atoms to bits, pointing toward a thermodynamic framework for intelligent, energy-aware electronics.

Biography:

Erbin Qiu is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics at the University of California, San Diego. He received his PhD in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego. His research focuses on energy-efficient, brain-inspired computing, where he develops new electronic devices that use heat and physical dynamics, rather than conventional digital logic, to process information.

His work addresses a fundamental challenge in modern computing: how to advance artificial intelligence while reducing energy consumption and environmental impact. Dr. Qiu has led independent research spanning device design, nanoscale fabrication, and experimental characterization. He is the first and corresponding author of multiple publications in leading journals, including Advanced Materials, PNAS, and Applied Physics Letters. His research has been recognized with several competitive honors, including the Schultz Prize as the sole recipient in the past six years, the Dr. William S.C. Chang Best Dissertation Award (2024) from UC San Diego, and the Von Neumann Distinguished Collaborative Research Award from the U.S. Department of Energy.

April 2026

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Engineering Next-Generation Membranes for Sustainable Separations

Daniel Morton — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:20:26 +0000

BES: Engineering Next-Generation Membranes for Sustainable Separations Daniel Morton Tue, 03/31/2026 - 13:20

Event Details

Tuesday March 31, 2026

SEEC Sievers Room (S228) | 10:00 - 11:00 AM

Abstract:

Water scarcity, constrained energy resources, and the accelerating demand for critical materials are defining challenges of this century. As global production of plastics, electronics, and advanced chemicals continues to grow, access to essential resources including lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, and energy feedstocks is becoming increasingly limited. These pressures highlight the urgent need for energy efficient separation technologies that can sustainably produce, recover, and recycle resources across the water-energy-materials nexus. Yet separations already account for a significant fraction of global energy consumption, and conventional thermal and extractive approaches are reaching their practical and economic limits.

This seminar will examine recent advances in the engineering of membranes for extreme and nontraditional separation environments. The discussion will cover fundamental insights into polymeric membrane compaction and the development of ultrahigh-pressure and high-temperature reverse osmosis membranes capable of stable operation under severe salinity, pressure, and thermal loading. The seminar will also highlight the expansion of membrane design into crystalline-framework and hybrid systems, including MOF and COF based composite membranes for selective lithium recovery from brines and battery-waste leachates. Collectively, these developments demonstrate how next generation membranes can enable energy efficient separations, advance the energy transition, and promote resource circularity.

Biography:

Dr. Jishan Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rice University WaTER Institute. His research focuses on engineering next-generation membrane materials for energy-efficient separations across the water–energy-materials nexus, with applications in critical-mineral recovery, brine management, and industrial process separations. His work integrates polymer science, nanoporous materials, interfacial chemistry, and transport phenomena to enable membrane operation under extreme pressure, temperature, and salinity. His research has been recognized through multiple competitive national fellowships, including the National Water Research Institute–Southern California Salinity Coalition (NWRI–SCSC) Fellowship, the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) Student Fellowship, and the American Membrane Technology Association / U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (AMTA/USBR) Fellowship. He is also a recipient of the Rising Star in Desalination Award and the Elsevier Young Researcher Best Oral Presentation Award. In addition to his research, he serves as an Early Career Editorial Board Member of Desalination and an Editorial Board Member of npj Clean Water.

March 2026

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Colloidal nanocrystals to advance catalysis and energy technologies

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 06:00:00 +0000

BES: Colloidal nanocrystals to advance catalysis and energy technologies Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/23/2024 - 00:00

Friday August 23, 2024

SEEC C120

2:00 - 3:00 PM

Abstract

Affordable clean energy and climate action are two of the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations to be achieved by 2030. The vast majority of energy technologies relies on nanomaterials. The progress of these technologies is strongly connected to the ability of inorganic chemists to tune the function-dictating features of nanomaterials. (i.e. size, composition, composition, morphology). In this talk, I will present our recent group efforts towards the synthesis via colloidal chemistry of atomically defined nanocrystals (NCs) which helps addressing current challenges in catalysis and energy conversion.

Biography

Professor Raffaella Buonsanti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at EPFL. She leads a multidisciplinary research program which spans from nanoscience to materials chemistry and electrocatalysis. She has received an ERC Starting Grant in 2016 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2022 in addition to numerous awards, including the Swiss Chemical Society Werner Price in 2021, the European Chemical Society Lecture Award and the Royal Chemical Society ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship in 2019, the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award in 2024. She is also an Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis.

Raffaella Buonsanti | EPFL, Switzerland

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Stimuli-responsive electronic energy levels at interfaces between organic semiconductors and perovskites & 2D semiconductors

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 06:00:00 +0000

BES: Stimuli-responsive electronic energy levels at interfaces between organic semiconductors and perovskites & 2D semiconductors Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/16/2024 - 00:00

Friday August 16, 2024

SEEC S228, Sievers Room

12:00 - 1:00 PM

Prof. Norbert Koch hosted a broad discussion around approaches for exploring the energy levels of organic semiconductors, with a particular focus on interactions across interfaces. This provided a didactic overview for researchers working on organic semiconductors, 2D semiconductors and perovskites.

Norbert Koch | Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Interdisciplinary opportunities in mineral sciences: from nanoscale to the moon

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 06:00:00 +0000

BES: Interdisciplinary opportunities in mineral sciences: from nanoscale to the moon Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/25/2024 - 00:00

Abstract:

Mineralogy is an ancient science, with writings on mineral properties dating to the 4th Century BC across cultures. Today, minerals are viewed as the containers of ingredients needed to develop the low-carbon economy, and before long mining will occur off the Earth. Mineral sciences are broad, and that perspective brings opportunity for interdisciplinary collaborations across fields of science, engineering and medicine. Originally driven to study mineral properties at extreme conditions of pressure, temperature, radiation, etc. in geophysical sciences, through collaborative opportunities my journey in the mineral sciences has led to technology transfer wherein extreme environments are the vehicle to create, modify or control material properties with some fundamental science applications in energy, nanotechnology and offworld construction.

Bio:

Steve Jacobsen is Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University and Faculty Affiliate of the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy, and the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience at Northwestern. He received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) through the National Science Foundation, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and was Editor of Geophysical Research Letters from 2018-2023. Prior to joining Northwestern, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bavarian Geoinstitute in Germany, and the Barbara McClintock Postdoctoral Fellow at the Earth and Planets Laboratory at Carnegie Institution for Science. He received his Ph.D. in geophysics in 2001 from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Steve Jacobsen | Northwestern University

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Understanding Thermal, Mechanical, and Structural Behaviors of Nanostructured Materials using Novel Ultraviolet Characterization Tools

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 07:00:00 +0000

BES: Understanding Thermal, Mechanical, and Structural Behaviors of Nanostructured Materials using Novel Ultraviolet Characterization Tools Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/07/2023 - 00:00

Thursday December 7, 2023

9:00 - 10:00 AM

SEEC Sievers Room S228

Abstract

Next-generation energy, nanoelectronic, and quantum technologies rely on the discovery, integration, and optimization of novel advanced materials. Importantly, predicting and characterizing the functional properties of these materials—e.g. thermal conductivities, mechanical stiffness, and magnetic behavior—is critical for their implementation into energy-efficient devices. Advances in energy storage, electric vehicles, communication, computation, thermoelectrics, electronics, and quantum technologies are reliant on understanding the transport of energy carriers (phonons, electrons, spins) in complex systems. However, as devices become increasingly complex with novel materials, 3D geometries, interfaces, and nanoscale dimensions, conventional models fail to accurately predict the functional properties and, traditional imaging and metrology tools cannot probe the relevant behaviors on their intrinsic length- and time-scales.

Joshua Knobloch | �鶹��Ƶ

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Make, Use, and Recycling Toward Sustainable Plastics

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

BES: Make, Use, and Recycling Toward Sustainable Plastics Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/13/2023 - 00:00

Monday November 13, 2023

2:00 - 3:00 PM

SEEC Building S228 (Sievers Room)

Download the Flyer

The Miyake Research Group

Abstract

This presentation will share three short stories focused on the make, use, and recycling of polymers with a focus on sustainability. In the first story, the development and application of organocatalyzed atom transfer radical polymerization using organic photoredox catalysts driven by visible light as well as their evolution and application toward challenging reductions including Birch reductions and PFAS remediation. In the second story, the synthesis and self-assembly of molecular bottlebrush block copolymers to photonic crystal coatings for greener structural coatings will be shared. In the third story an approach toward chemically recyclable polyolefin-like multiblock polymers with diverse mechanical properties through the construction of multiblock polymers from hard and soft oligomeric building blocks will be discussed. The multiblock polymers exhibit broad mechanical properties, spanning elastomers to plastomers to thermoplastics, while integrating a high melting transition temperature (T_m) and low glass transition temperature (T_g) making them suitable for use across diverse applications (T_m as high as 128 °C and T_g as low as -60 °C). After use, the different plastics can be combined and efficiently deconstructed back to the fundamental hard and soft building blocks for separation and repolymerization to realize a closed-loop recycling process.

Biography

Garret M. Miyake is the Dr. Robert Williams Professor of Organic Chemistry at Colorado State University. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Pacific University. He completed his Ph.D. studies with Eugene Chen at Colorado State University before conducting postdoctoral research with Robert Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology. He has been recently recognized with the 2021 ACS Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering Journal of Polymer Science Innovation Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Blavatnik Young Scientist Award. The Miyake group has research interests focusing on photoredox catalysis, sustainable polymers, as well as the synthesis of block copolymers that self-assemble to photonic crystals.

Garret M. Miyake | Colorado State University

Off

Traditional

White

BES: Environmental Carbon Dioxide Removal - An Electrifying Tale

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 06:00:00 +0000

BES: Environmental Carbon Dioxide Removal - An Electrifying Tale Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/18/2023 - 00:00

Tuesday April 18, 2024

1:30 - 2:30 PM

SEEC C120

Download the Flyer

Abstract:

It is now well-established that reliance on fossil fuels for our energy needs is having a devastating effect on global climate patterns and our eco system. We can no longer rely simply on accelerated use of renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels to avert this crisis, which is caused by the continuing atmospheric accumulation of CO2 from industrial emissions; we must also deploy Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) in which accumulated heat-trapping CO2 is removed directly from the ambient environment itself. Indeed, there has been a recent surge of interest in exploiting direct air capture (DAC) for this purpose, a surge that has not yet been matched by a similar drive to reduce CO2 in oceans, where increasing acidification has led to destruction of coral reefs, and reduced carbonate ion concentrations harm shellfish and other marine life. Since the total CO2 accumulation rate by oceans rivals that in the atmosphere, effective means its removal from seawaters could augment the other NETs to reduce the environmental burden imposed by this greenhouse gas. Traditional approaches for CO2 capture and release generally rely on either chemical or physical interactions with sorbents with subsequent temperature or pressure changes to release the captured CO2 and regenerate the sorbent. Isothermal operations that obviate or significantly reduce the heat integration requirements in these processes could potentially have significant advantages over the traditional methods in terms of complexity, energetics, and cost of the overall capture operation. Electrochemically based technologies that rely primarily on renewable energy resources for the capture and release of CO2 under isothermal conditions may, therefore, offer effective alternative approaches for both point-of-use gas emissions mitigation, and for removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean waters. In this presentation, we will discuss the general principles underlying electrochemical processes, and the opportunities and challenges inherent in their implementation to address the pressing problems facing our world today (and tomorrow!).

Bio:

T. Alan Hatton is the Ralph Landau Professor and Director of the David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in Chemical Engineering at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, and worked at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria for three years before attending the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to obtain his PhD. He is currently Faculty Lead on Carbon Management in the Future Energy Systems Center of the MIT Energy Initiative. His research interests have encompassed self-assembly of surfactants and block copolymers, synthesis and functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles, and the exploitation of these stimuli-responsive materials for chemical, environmental and pharmaceutical processing applications. More recently, his group has pioneered a number of electrochemically mediated operations for water treatment and resource recovery, as well as for carbon dioxide removal from point sources, ambient air, and ocean waters. In addition, his laboratory has spun out two start-up companies: Verdox (2019), which is developing electrochemical swing processes for CO2 capture from point sources and ambient air, was recently awarded a $1 million Elon Musk XPrize, while Mantel Capture (2022) is focused on exploiting molten salts for CO2 capture at the high temperatures at which it is produced in many chemical industries.

T. Alan Hatton

Off

Traditional

White