Faculty Candidate Presentation

Electromagnetic synthesis and control for next generation communication, sensing, and imaging systems: From Microwave-to-Terahertz.

 Suresh Venkatesh,
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University

Thursday, February 10, 2022, 1PM

Zoom: https://syracuseuniversity.zoom.us/j/99025703812?pwd=ZWZCQktFMkR5ajQyQTBQQTJ2U2tudz09

Abstract: Human societal and technological progress has coincided with how well we have been able to harness the electromagnetic spectrum in a technology that is scalable. In the next few decades, as we step into a world of ubiquitous connectivity, intelligent autonomous robotics, and cyber-physical systems, we will harness a spectral span stretching from 30 GHz to 300+ GHz, that is orders of magnitude larger than we ever had access to in human history. This shared spectral resource will serve as the backbone to enable intelligent, ubiquitous, and low-cost wireless access. As we have painfully learnt during the current pandemic, internet access has emerged as a critical means for sharing knowledge, and for allowing economic and education opportunities in the future.

My research aims to address the fundamental aspects of connecting information-to-electromagnetic-fields through new methodologies across the sensor interface to computational information processing, leading to end-to-end advanced communication and sensor technologies from microwaves to terahertz (THz) frequencies. The core emphasis is on fundamental techniques to control and manipulate electromagnetic fields in this untapped spectrum at deep sub-wavelength scales, across both spatial and temporal domain. This can manifest as secure wireless communication for 5G systems, new imaging interfaces for robotics and cyber-physical systems, high-sensitivity and high-throughput cancer cell detection for hand-held biomedical diagnostic sensors. My research work crosses the boundaries from fundamental techniques of sub-wavelength control of electromagnetic fields to large-scale integrated chips and information processing – an approach that not only opens-up unique and interesting design spaces, but also has crucial implications in advancing the field of wireless communication, imaging, and sensing across the electromagnetic spectrum. Through a unified approach of spatio-temporal control across the spectrum, I will highlight the following diverse works during the talk. 1) Intelligent and Massively Reconfigurable THz Holographic Metasurfaces using CMOS chip tiling. 2) Spatio-Temporal approach based Physical Layer Security for 5G wireless networks. 3) Origami based Adaptive Microwave Computational Imaging System. I plan to conclude with some of my future research interests.

 Bio:  Suresh Venkatesh received his M.S degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2010 and his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Utah in 2017 under the guidance of Prof. David Schurig.  His PhD dissertation received the ECE Outstanding Dissertation Award, 2016. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Integrated Micro-systems Research Lab, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Princeton University. He is the recipient of the 2021-22 Mistletoe Research fellowship from Momental Foundation. He was also a Research Project Assistant at Molecular Astronomy Laboratory, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore during 2007-08, where he worked on millimeter-wave radio telescope. His research interests are in electromagnetics, metamaterials, antenna design, integrated circuits, computational imaging, and transformation optics design. He has authored/co-authored more than 50 journal and conference publications. He is serving as the affiliate technical committee member on MTT-21 Terahertz Technology and Applications and MTT- 23 Wireless Communications and serves as a Region 1- 6 coordinator for IEEE MTTS Young Professionals program. At Princeton University, he serves as the committee member at the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, ECE Dept. and is also part of the Prison Teaching Initiative