Somak Bhattacharyya
The IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) Student Branch Chapter at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Banaras Hindu University (BHU) Varanasi (SBC-M) has been continuing to organize technical talks after being selected for the Outstanding Chapter Award in 2022. Four distinct seminars were arranged during the period from May to December 2022, apart from a Young Professional’s talk by Dr. Tushar Sharma [1]. The first seminar, “Development of Photonic ASICs for Optical Remote Sensing missions of ISRO,” was organized by the Chapter in conjunction with the IEEE Photonics SBC IIT BHU Varanasi (SBC-P) on 31 May 2022 (flyer shown in Figure 1). The event took place in IIT BHU’s ABLT-1 Hall. More than 50 people from various departments at IIT BHU attended the lecture by Arup Banerjee, scientist/engineer-SG at the Space Applications Center (SAC), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and head of the Sensor Focal Plane Systems Division/EOSDIG/SEDA/SAC as seen from Figure 2. The second technical talk, “Hardware Neuromorphic Computing Platforms,” was scheduled on 22 June 2022 (flyer provided in Figure 3). Dr. Shubham Sahay, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT, Kanpur, spoke at the seminar, which had 31 attendees. He was felicitated by Prof. Satyabrata Jit at the end of the talk (Figure 4). The third seminar, “Atomic Orbital Overlap Engineering for 3D–2D Contacts and Record High-Performance 2D Transistors,” took place on 5 August 2022 (flyer shown in Figure 5) and was organized by the IEEE MTT-S, the IEEE Electron Devices Society (SBC-E), and IEEE Photonics Society SBCs. More than 25 people from various departments of IIT BHU, Varanasi, attended the talk by Dr. Mayank Shrivastava (Figure 6), an associate professor in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. The fourth seminar, “Frequency-Selective Surfaces for Aerospace Applications: Radome, Antennas, and RAS,” took place on 26 October 2022, the flyer of which is provided in Figure 7. Dr. Shiv Narayan, principal scientist, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, was the speaker, and his talk was attended by around 20 participants At the end of the talk, a group photograph with Dr. Shiv Narayan was clicked as seen from Figure 8. All four seminars started and ended with a formal introduction of the speaker and a vote of thanks given by Dr. Somak Bhattacharyya, faculty advisor of SBC-M.
Figure 1. Flyer of the talk by Arup Banerjee.
Figure 2. The group photograph of the audience with the resource person, Mr. Arup Banerjee, from SAC, ISRO.
Figure 3. Flyer of the event of the lecture by Dr. Shubham Sahay.
Figure 4. Felicitation of Dr. Shubham Sahay by Prof. Satyabrata Jit.
Figure 5. Flyer of the talk of Prof. Mayank Shrivastava.
Figure 6. Lecture by Prof. Mayank Shrivastava.
Figure 7. Flyer of the talk by Dr. Shiv Narayan.
Figure 8. Student volunteers and the author with Dr. Shiv Narayan.
In the first seminar, Arup Banerjee started his presentation with a brief overview of optical imaging detector technologies. He took the students through the journey of development of imaging detectors, which involved process selection, device design, chip design, package design, chip characterization, chip evaluation and optimization, and chip screening and qualification. Banerjee provided vivid details of several recent developments, such as active imaging (depth sensor) detector arrays and their performance, and also discussed a hyperspectral imaging detector array. He then discussed the applications of design and characterization used in optical imaging detector technologies at ISRO as well as worldwide. Finally, he ended his talk with some of his recent work related to the development of a CMOS time-delay integration array and smart optical imaging sensor for next-generation systems. As a final point, the talk was followed by a discussion, in which the audience raised a few questions for clarification and expressed their gratitude to the speaker as well as the organizer. The event was concluded with appreciating comments from the faculty advisor of IEEE Photonics SBC-P, Dr. Santanu Das.
In the second seminar, Dr. Shubham Sahay spoke about utilizing emerging analog-grade nonvolatile memory devices, such as resistive random-access memory, for realizing neuromorphic processing engines. He discussed the widespread and ever-increasing demand for performing computationally intensive applications, such as deep/recurrent neural networks and signal processing on the edge in emerging mobile Internet of Things devices, which require fast, compact, and energy-efficient processing engines. Because of the conventional von Neumann architecture, even the most advanced digital approaches, such as GPUs, incur significantly increased power consumption owing to frequent memory access. Therefore, there is an urgent need for area- and energy-efficient hardware that can process neural networks on the edge. The talk was followed by a discussion, in which the audience raised questions and expressed their gratitude to the speaker as well as the organizer.
In the third seminar, Dr. Mayank Shrivastava delivered his talk in two parts; the first part was an overview of 2D and 3D materials, focusing on graphene, and the second part was on the contact resistance of graphene. The talk was followed by a discussion. Finally, the event was concluded with a word of appreciation by Dr. Shivam Verma, faculty advisor of IEEE Electron Devices (SBC-E).
In the last seminar, Dr. Shiv Narayan’s presentation concentrated on the design and analysis of frequency-selective surfaces to realize high-performance radomes, antennas, and radar absorbing structures (RAS) and the use of advanced numerical techniques, such as the mode-matching generalized scattering matrix and the transmission line matrix mode-matching methods. He talked about the ray-based geometrical optics approach in association with the aperture integration method to build and study airborne radomes with a view to hardware implementation. The program was successfully concluded by the presentation of a memento as a token of gratitude by the faculty advisor of SBC-M, Dr. Somak Bhattacharyya.
[1] S. Bhattacharyya, “Report of webinar on ‘opportunity in chaos (next-generation wireless technologies)’ [Young Professionals] ,” IEEE Microw. Mag., vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 86–87, Feb. 2023, doi: 10.1109/MMM.2022.3218237.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3256394