PhD in Event-based adaptive sensing at the edge

This PhD research will take place at the ESAT-MICAS (Microelectronics and Sensors) research group of KU Leuven Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), which is internationally renowned for its research on integrated electronics.
Academic supervisor will be Prof. Georges Gielen, who is an expert in the design and design automation of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits.
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Project

More and more electronics are being used “in the edge”. Think of biomedical wearables, internet of things sensing nodes, autonomous robots, etc. The PhD project will investigate the design of event-based neuromorphic ultra-low-power active sensor readout and processing at the edge. The chip design will enable online learning capabilities, aiming at modulating the spatio-temporal filtering properties with locally stored internal models of the environment.

With existing edge solutions as baseline, a design solution will be explored to cope with the hardware constraints and the impact on energy consumption of implementing learning and adaptation capabilities of increasing complexity at the edge. To the extent possible, the design should be agnostic to the particular choice of sensor and application, but the actual implementation will draw from typical challenges drawn by selected applications, like vision and olfactory sensing, which are interesting because of their strikingly different spatiotemporal resolution requirements.

The PhD project is part of the European Marie-Curie network ELEVATE, and includes a short stay at the location of another partner in the project.

Profile

Required background:

Master in Electrical/Electronic Engineering with proven knowledge of analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits.

Additional research/development experience in any of the following topics is a plus:

• hands-on experience in design of (analog/mixed-signal) integrated circuits.
• hands-on experience with methods of optimization and circuit design and layout.

Candidates should be motivated, independent, show critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and should have strong team-player skills.

Excellent proficiency in the English language is required, as well as good communication skills, both oral and written.

Offer

The position offers :

• A PhD scholarship for 4 years, with a competitive monthly stipend;
• An exciting interdisciplinary research environment at KU Leuven, Europe’s most innovative university;
• A collaboration with other researchers and partners within the ELEVATE ITN network;
• The possibility to participate in international conferences and ELEVATE workshops.

website of Prof. Georges Gielen

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. ir. Georges Gielen, tel.: +32 16 32 40 76, mail: [email protected] or Mrs. Aldona Niemiro-Sznajder, tel.: +32 16 32 96 07, mail: [email protected].

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