Student Award 2025

The collaborative research team led by Prof Arindam Basu (Professor of EE) and Prof Haoliang Li (Assistant Professor of EE), has published a paper in the top journal – Nature Communications, on 29 January 2025.

Title: Efficient nonlinear function approximation in analog resistive crossbars for recurrent neural networks
Authors:

• Prof Arindam Basu (Professor of EE, CityUHK)
• Prof Haoliang Li (Assistant Professor of EE, CityUHK)
• Mr Junyi Yang - first author, Mr Shuai Dong and Mr Pao Sheng Sun (PhD student at CityUHK supervised by Prof Arindam Basu)
• Mr Yichuan Cheng (PhD student at CityUHK supervised by Prof Haoliang Li)
• Prof Can Li (Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong)
• Mr Ruibin Mao - first author and Mr Mingrui Jiang (PhD student, The University of Hong Kong)
• Dr Giacomo Pedretti, Dr Xia Sheng and Mr Jim Ignowski (Hewlett Packard Labs, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Milpitas, CA, USA)

This Nature Communications paper can be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56254-6. To give you a glimpse of the research work, here is a quote from the abstract: 

In this work, we experimentally demonstrate the implementation of a non-linear activation function integrated with a ramp analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) at the periphery of the memory to improve in-memory implementation of RNNs. Our approach uses an extra column of memristors to produce an appropriately pre-distorted ramp voltage such that the comparator output directly approximates the desired nonlinear function. We experimentally demonstrate programming different nonlinear functions using a memristive array and simulate its incorporation in RNNs to solve keyword spotting and language modelling tasks. Compared to other approaches, we demonstrate manifold increase in area-efficiency, energy-efficiency and throughput due to the in-memory, programmable ramp generator that removes digital processing overhead.

The collaborative research team led by Prof Cheng Wang (Associate Professor of EE) and Prof Edwin Pun (Chair Professor of EE), has published a paper in the top journal – Nature Photonics, on 27 January 2025.

Title: Integrated lithium niobate photonic millimetre-wave radar
Authors:

1. Prof Cheng Wang (Associate Professor of EE, CityUHK)
2. Prof Edwin Pun (Chair Professor of EE, CityUHK)
3. Dr Yiwen Zhang- first author (PhD graduate in Feb 2025 at CityUHK supervised by Prof Cheng Wang)
4. Dr Hanke Feng (Postdoctoral Fellow of EE, CityUHK)
5. Mr Yongji Wang (PhD student of CHEM, CityUHK)
6. Prof Sha Zhu – first author (Nankai University)
7. Academician Ning Hua Zhu (Nankai University)
8. Miss Jiaxue Feng (Beijing University of Technology)
9. Mr Kunpeng Zhai (Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

This Nature Photonics paper has been selected as the front cover for the February issue. The paper can also be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-024-01608-7. To know more about the research work, please visit the research story here.