Events Listing

The Bell Museum presents Brains Live! You will hear from neuroscientist Dr. Manny Esguerra for this special Brain Awareness Week presentation. During the live event (from a lab at the University of Minnesota), Dr. Esguerra will show us a real human brain and discuss what the brain does, how it can trick you, and what parts of a brain do important jobs.

More details at the Bell Museum 

Spintronic Phenomena for Unconventional Computing Applications

The rich physics present in a wide range of spintronic materials and devices provide opportunities for a variety of computing applications. This presentation will describe four distinct proposals to leverage spintronic phenomena for reversible computing, neuromorphic computing, reservoir computing, and hardware security. The presentation will begin with an introduction to reversible computing, and the primary focus of this presentation will be on a solution for reversible computing in which magnetic skyrmions propagate and interact in a scalable system with the potential for energy dissipation below the Landauer limit. An approach for neuromorphic computing based on the stochastic switching of spin-transfer torque magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) will then be discussed, including results from the first experimental demonstration of a neuromorphic network with MTJ synapses. Next, a reservoir computing system will be described that efficiently leverages the dynamics of frustrated nanomagnets. This presentation will conclude with a logic locking paradigm based on nanomagnet logic, the first logic locking system that is secure against both physical and algorithmic attacks.

About the speaker

Joseph S. Friedman is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas and director of the NeuroSpinCompute Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Northwestern University and undergraduate degrees from Dartmouth College. He was previously a CNRS Research Associate with Université Paris-Saclay, a summer faculty fellow at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, a visiting professor at Politecnico di Torino, a guest scientist at RWTH Aachen University, and worked on logic design automation at Intel Corporation. Friedman is a member of the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology and Microelectronics Journal, has been on the technical program committees of DAC, DATE, SPIE Spintronics, NANOARCH, GLSVLSI, VLSI-SoC, ICRC, NICE, ICECS, NMDC, and LASCAS, and the ISCAS and AICAS review committees. He has been a member of the organizing committee of NANOARCH, VLSI-SoC, and DCAS, is the vice-chair of the Dallas Chapter of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, and is the founder and chairperson of the Texas Symposium on Computing with Emerging Technologies (ComET). He has also been awarded the NSF CAREER award.
 

Engineering molecules and cells for programmable biology

Programming the biological world is an important grand challenge for science and engineering. The fields of molecular computing and synthetic biology address this challenge by implementing computational functions using engineered biomolecules and engineered cells, respectively. The long-term goal of my research is to enable programmable control of biomolecular computing systems for use in practical applications for which micro-processors cannot be used, in particular, for biomedical diagnostics within living cells. This talk will outline three strands of research ongoing in my group: on computational tools and languages for biodesign, on DNA nanotechnology and molecular programming, and on synthetic biology and synthetic cells. The common thread tying these research directions together is the application of concepts and tools from computer science to experimental bioengineering.

About the speaker

Matthew Lakin is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico. He is also affiliated with the UNM Center for Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering. Lakin obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge and was subsequently a postdoc at Microsoft Research. His work integrates computational and experimental work in DNA nanotechnology and synthetic biology to program biomolecular assemblies, cells, and synthetic cell-like systems. His long-term research goal is to apply biomolecular computing systems to address important societal challenges, with a particular focus on applications where regular computing devices cannot be deployed, such as the autonomous diagnosis and treatment of disease in living cells. Lakin received the NSF CAREER award in 2021.

Many UMN colleges will be hosting virtual internship and career fairs in February! These fairs are opportunities to connect with potential employers and learn more about their internship and career opportunities. Career Services and ISSS staff are arranging International Student Virtual Career Fair Preparation Workshops. You will learn what to expect at the fair, how to interact with employers, and what work authorization options are available to you. We hope to address any questions you might have. 

These virtual workshops will be held on Zoom, and a recording will be available later. All UMN International Students are welcome to join. We recommend attending one of the two available workshops. Use the Handshake link to learn more, and register via the Zoom link to join.

If you have questions, please email Jane, UMN International Career Consultant, at sitt0036@umn.edu. 

The brightest star in the night sky remains high above the horizon in March, join us as we explore the sky around Sirius, the Dog Star. Using its bright light we can find dozens of different deep sky objects, and a host of other constellations. If you’re not a dog person, don’t despair! Our early spring sky features the magnificent Leo, who can help us spot magnificent galactic clusters. 

Don’t forget to bring your questions, as we’ll save time for Q & A.

Be sure to download your own current Minnesota Skies Guide: https://www.bellmuseum.umn.edu/star-map

Student English Language Support (SELS) and Career Services are collaborating to help international students successfully navigate small talk conversations. Small talk is a big part of English conversations whether you are making friends after class or networking at a professional event. In this interactive workshop, you will learn what topics make good small talk and how to start, maintain, and politely end small talk conversations with ease. All UMN International students are welcome.

This is an in-person event in a large, spacious classroom in Bruininks Hall (room 412). Please email Jane at sitt0036@umn.edu with any questions.

Join IEEE UMN on Thursday, Feb 17th from 5pm-6pm in Keller 3-125 for an information session on internship and full-time roles that General Mills is looking to fill for their Fall program. There will be ECE alumni in attendance who will provide details about the program and the experience that it can provide. There will also be an abundance of snacks from General Mills to eat during the event and take home as well! 

RSVP is required for the event.

Memory Defenses - Elevation from Obscurity to Headlines  

Several recent demonstrations have highlighted that modern processors are likely being shipped with latent vulnerabilities that are impossible to anticipate. To handle a large suite of possible attacks, processors may need to incorporate an array of defenses. Attacks like Meltdown and Spectre may have finally pushed these defenses from the shadows of academia into possible commercial reality.

This talk will describe three primary vulnerabilities in the memory system, and efficient hardware defenses to address each of these vulnerabilities. The first vulnerability is leakage of a program's memory intensity through memory controller timing channels. The second is a violation of memory integrity. The third is leakage of a program's memory access pattern through exposed DDR buses. With recent innovations, the performance overheads of defenses for the first two vulnerabilities have been reduced to under 2X, while much work remains for the third vulnerability. 

About the speaker

Rajeev Balasubramonian is a professor at the School of Computing, University of Utah. He received his B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1998. He received his MS (2000) and Ph.D. (2003) degrees from the University of Rochester. His primary research interests include memory systems, security, and application-specific architectures. Balasubramonian is a recipient of a US National Science Foundation CAREER award, an IBM Faculty Partnership award, an HP Innovation Research Program award, an Intel Outstanding Research Award, various teaching awards at the University of Utah, and multiple best paper awards. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2021 for contributions to in-memory computation and memory interface design.

Merging Nanotechnology & Synthetic Biology toward Directed Evolution of Energy Materials

The interface between nanomaterials and biological systems, the living and synthetic worlds, has evolved into a new science, nanobiotechnology, which deals with the design of materials for a variety of applications, from the environmentally friendly energy sources to neural modulation through optogenetics. The evolution of a new function, which goes far beyond the individual original inorganic particles and biological entities, requires a powerful combination of chemical synthesis, fabrication, synthetic biology, and self-assembly into hybrid hierarchical structures. In our work, we use microbial rhodopsins, transmembrane protein channels that are capable of light-guided translocation of ions across the lipid membrane. We demonstrated that by combining them with inorganic nanostructures they can function as artificial photosynthesis. Besides, by interfacing channelrhodopsin with XEOL nanoparticles we have developed wireless X-ray modulation of brain neurons.

About the speaker

Elena Rozhkova earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Moscow State University of Fine Chemical Technology, Russia. After completing JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tohoku University, Japan, she joined Department of Chemistry, Princeton University as a Research Staff member. Since 2007 she is a Staff Scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory. Her area of research is nanoscale biohybrid architectures for energy conversion and biomodulation at the nano-bio interface. She is a recipient of professional awards: Brain Research Foundation Fay/Frank Women’s Council, the University of Chicago Argonne Board of Governors Distinguished Performance “In recognition of pioneering interdisciplinary cancer treatment research via bio-functionalized vortex structures”, the Prof. M. J. Nanjan Fourth Endowment Lecture and Award “For outstanding contributions in the field of nano-biotechnology," the University of Madras, India. She is a 2021/22 IEEE NC Distinguished Lecturer.

This is an opportunity to put a face to your resume and emphasize your strengths. Some students say their formal interviews are easier because they've already met the employer representative at the Career Fair and have established a rapport with the potential interviewer. Learn more at the Career Fair Home Page.