People

Luke Theogarajan

Principal Investigator

Luke Theogarajan is currently a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007. His research interests include combining the processing power of electronics with the versatility of synthetic chemistry to develop neural prosthetic devices, integrating CMOS circuits with nanoscale sensors to develop novel biosensors and developing simple synthetic mimics of biological function to gain a deeper physical understanding of biological phenomena. Before starting his Ph.D, he worked for intel for 5 years where he was part of the Pentium 4 design team. He has published both in the field of electrical engineering and polymer chemistry and holds 4 patents. Professor Theogarajan is also a 2010 NIH New Innovator Award recipient and a 2011 NSF Career Award recipient. He has been awarded the Northrupp Grumman Excellence in teaching award in 2011 and the outstanding faculty member in EE for the years 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2017.

Graduate Students

Zachary Nelson

Ph.D Candidate Year 5

Zach received his B.S. Degree in Electrical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara in 2020, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. His research is in Chip to Wafer Packaging for Opto-Electronic Integration.

Alice Mo

Ph.D Candidate Year 5

Alice received her B.S. Degree in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, with a focus on Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) and Bio-MEMS. Her research interests include using semiconductors for bio-applications

Wonsik Oh

Ph.D Candidate Year 4

Wonsik received his B.S. degree in Semiconductor System Engineering from Sungkyunkwan University in 2021. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, with a focus on CMOS image sensors, biometric image sensors, and X-ray detectors. His research interests include analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits and optical devices.

Jinesh Jhonsa

Ph.D Candidate Year 5

Jinesh received his Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, where he works as a Graduate Research Assistant. His research focuses on fully connected in-memory simulated annealing processors for solving combinatorial optimization problems and FPGA-based signal processing for advanced communication systems.

William Whitehead

Ph.D Candidate Year 4

William has a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from UCLA and has been working in Professor Theogarajan's lab at UCSB since fall 2020. He is currently focused on expanding the concept of probabilistic computing from p-bits (representing Ising models) to p-digits of arbitrary radix (representing Potts models). This task includes dashes of several fields, including device physics, VLSI design, and algorithms.

Macan Tadayon

Ph.D Candidate Year 6

Macan received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of California Los Angeles in 2017. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, with a focus on CMOS image sensors for biomedical applications. His research interests include analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits.

Undergraduates

Nikhil Kapasi

Second Year

Nikhil is currently pursuing a B.S. in Computer Engineering and joined a research lab in Octover 2023. I am currently working on FPGA development and architectures for training, inference, and networks of boltzmann machines.

Tishya Chauhan

Second Year

Tishya currently pursuing a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and joined a research lab in January 2024. I am currently working on FPGA development and architectures for training, inference, and networks of boltzmann machines.

Rachit Gupta

Second Year

Rachit is currently pursuing a B.S. in Computer Engineering and joined a research lab in January 2024. My project involves developing a food image classification model for a device that helps monitor the daily intake of individuals with specific health conditions. Additionally, we are incorporating TINY ML to ensure privacy by segregating faces directly on the device, enhancing user confidentiality.