Engineering Professor Receives National Science Foundation CAREER Grant
Yiran Chen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, has been awarded a five-year, $450,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER Program offers prestigious awards that support junior faculty members who demonstrate a great understanding of their fields through groundbreaking research.
The objective of Chen’s research is to leverage the unique properties of a memristor device—an emerging nano device that can remember electrical currents in a fashion similar to the way the human brain processes memory—to understand the synaptic behavior in electrical neural networks. The proposed neuromorphic computing circuit would act like a human brain that runs with high-power efficiency and could be manufactured at an ultralow cost.
Chen has been a member of the University’s faculty since 2010 and has more than 120 refereed publications, 69 granted U.S. patents, and multiple best-paper awards in the areas of postsilicon devices, very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design, low-power circuit and architecture, neuromorphic computing, and sensing technology.
Other Stories From This Issue
On the Freedom Road
Follow a group of Pitt students on the Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights bus tour, a nine-day, 2,300-mile journey crisscrossing five states.
Day 1: The Awakening
Day 2: Deep Impressions
Day 3: Music, Montgomery, and More
Day 4: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Day 5: Learning to Remember
Day 6: The Mountaintop
Day 7: Slavery and Beyond
Day 8: Lessons to Bring Home
Day 9: Final Lessons