Events

May 2 - May 8, 2021

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  Advances in Microelectromechanical Digital Circuit Design: Low Power Computation, Sensing and Beyond

  Hossein Fariborzi, Adjunct Professor (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering

  May 2, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Microelectromechanical Digital Circuit design Low Power computation Sensing

  Electromechanical switches were the core elements of the very first digital computers in early 20th century. While these switches were later replaced by the smaller, faster and more reliable "transistor" technology, they found a new life following the development of nanofabrication tools and Micro-electromechannical Systems (MEMS). In this seminar we will explore the most recent advances in the field of MEMS-based digital circuit and sensor design. We also examine the application of MEMS switches and resonators in building the most important blocks of a digital system, namely adders, multipliers, data converters, sequential and combinational complex logic, and discuss the future of this technology in the beyond-CMOS era.

Apr 25 - May 1, 2021

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  Dynamical Modeling, Analysis, Monitoring and Control of Wastewater Treatment Processes - Part 2B

  Prof. Denis Dochain, ICTEAM, Université Catholique de Louvain

  Apr 27, 14:00 - 15:30

  KAUST

  wastewater treatment adaptive linearizing control dynamical modeling

  There are three main classes of wastewater treatment processes (WWTP’s): activated sludge, anaerobic digestion, and lagoon. The course will start to give a short introduction on these three types of WWTP’s. Each topic considered in the course will be illustrated via these three processes.
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  Dynamical Modeling, Analysis, Monitoring and Control of Wastewater Treatment Processes - Part 2A

  Prof. Denis Dochain, ICTEAM, Université Catholique de Louvain

  Apr 27, 10:30 - 12:00

  KAUST

  wastewater treatment adaptive linearizing control dynamical modeling

  There are three main classes of wastewater treatment processes (WWTP’s): activated sludge, anaerobic digestion, and lagoon. The course will start to give a short introduction on these three types of WWTP’s. Each topic considered in the course will be illustrated via these three processes.
• 

  Applied Complexity: Ultra-flat AI materials for different applications

  Andrea Fratalocchi, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Apr 25, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  We review our recent results on artificial-intelligent designed ultra-flat materials that embeds "physical" neural networks for different application in biomedical imaging, optics, displays, and structural color generation.

Apr 18 - Apr 24, 2021

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  Introduction to hybrid dynamical systems: Part 2B

  Prof. Mohamed Djemai, University Polytechnique Hauts-de-France

  Apr 22, 14:00 - 15:30

  KAUST

  Dynamical Systems Modelization Time Scale Approach

  This research is motivated not only because the control of some systems is implemented through the combination of continuous control laws with discrete switching logic but also because a wide range of physical and engineering systems exhibit hybrid behavior. Among the problems to be addressed, those of stabilization and observation are particularly important in order to always improve the efficiency of systems in terms of performance, lifetime and efficiency.
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  Introduction to hybrid dynamical systems: Part 2A

  Prof. Mohamed Djemai, University Polytechnique Hauts-de-France

  Apr 22, 10:30 - 12:00

  KAUST

  Dynamical Systems Modelization Time Scale Approach

  In recent years, new theoretical tools have been developed to describe complex systems more precisely, such as hybrid dynamical systems (HDS). Many works ranging from modelling to stabilisation, or control and observation have focused on the study of this class of systems. This research is motivated not only because the control of some systems is implemented through the combination of continuous control laws with discrete switching logic but also because a wide range of physical and engineering systems exhibit hybrid behavior. Among the problems to be addressed, those of stabilization and observation are particularly important in order to always improve the efficiency of systems in terms of performance, lifetime and efficiency.
• 

  Dynamical Modeling, Analysis, Monitoring and Control of Wastewater Treatment Processes - Part 1B

  Prof. Denis Dochain, ICTEAM, Université Catholique de Louvain

  Apr 20, 14:00 - 15:30

  KAUST

  wastewater treatment adaptive linearizing control dynamical modeling

  There are three main classes of wastewater treatment processes (WWTP’s): activated sludge, anaerobic digestion, and lagoon. The course will start to give a short introduction on these three types of WWTP’s. Each topic considered in the course will be illustrated via these three processes.
• 

  Dynamical Modeling, Analysis, Monitoring and Control of Wastewater Treatment Processes - Part 1A

  Prof. Denis Dochain, ICTEAM, Université Catholique de Louvain

  Apr 20, 10:30 - 12:00

  KAUST

  wastewater treatment adaptive linearizing control dynamical modeling

  The objective of this course is to give an introduction and cover recent aspects of dynamical modeling, monitoring and control of wastewater treatment processes. There are three main classes of wastewater treatment processes (WWTP’s): activated sludge, anaerobic digestion, and lagoon. The course will start to give a short introduction on these three types of WWTP’s. Each topic considered in the course will be illustrated via these three processes.
• 

  KL Divergence Regularized Learning Model for Multi-Agent Decision Making

  Shinkyu Park, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Apr 18, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  The large population game framework has been widely adopted in biology, economics, and engineering fields to model and analyze strategic interactions among decision-making agents. In this framework, a population of agents select strategies of interaction with one another and repeatedly revise their strategy choices using revisions defined by a decision-making model. While many of existing works in the literature focus on designing decision-making models that ensure convergence of the agents’ strategy revision to Nash equilibrium, a still open challenge is to establish the convergence when the agents’ strategy revision is subject to time delay. Such scenarios include multi-agent decision problems in which there is delay in propagation of traffic congestion in congestion games, communication between the electric power utility and demand response agents in demand response games, and information transmission between agents in network games. In this seminar, I’ll introduce our recent work on designing a new decision-making model called the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence regularized learning. We will discuss how the new model enables a large population of agents to learn and self-organize to an effective strategy profile in population games subject to time delay and implication of the new model in engineering applications.

Apr 11 - Apr 17, 2021

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  Introduction to hybrid dynamical systems: Part 1B

  Prof. Mohamed Djemai, University Polytechnique Hauts-de-France

  Apr 15, 14:00 - 15:30

  KAUST

  Dynamical Systems Modelization Time Scale Approach

  This research is motivated not only because the control of some systems is implemented through the combination of continuous control laws with discrete switching logic but also because a wide range of physical and engineering systems exhibit hybrid behavior. Among the problems to be addressed, those of stabilization and observation are particularly important in order to always improve the efficiency of systems in terms of performance, lifetime and efficiency.
• 

  Introduction to hybrid dynamical systems: Part 1A

  Prof. Mohamed Djemai, University Polytechnique Hauts-de-France

  Apr 15, 10:30 - 12:00

  KAUST

  Dynamical Systems Modelization Time Scale Approach

  In recent years, new theoretical tools have been developed to describe complex systems more precisely, such as hybrid dynamical systems (HDS). Many works ranging from modelling to stabilisation, or control and observation have focused on the study of this class of systems.
• 

  Pointing and Trajectory Tracking Control for Optical Wireless Communication

  Ibrahima N’Doye, Research Scientist, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), CEMSE, KAUST

  Apr 11, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Pointing Trajectory tracking control Optical wireless communication

  In this talk, I will present our recent works on reducing the beam pointing error for improved free-space optical communication (FSO) link performance. Specifically, I will discuss a robust control strategy that reduces the beam alignment error under controlled weak turbulence conditions for FSO systems. Then, I will discuss localization and tracking control of a mobile target ship with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in underwater environment. The framework is designed using a hybrid acoustic-optical underwater communication to drive the AUV to the maximum achievable data rate angle. The acoustic link is used for non-line-of-sight localization, and the optical link is for line-of-sight transmission. I will conclude the talk by providing recent results on estimating the alignment angle through a novel estimation-based reference trajectory control algorithm for an LED-based optical communication model.

Apr 4 - Apr 10, 2021

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  Discriminant Analysis and Support Vector Regression in High Dimensions: Sharp Performance Analysis and Optimal Designs

  Houssem Sifaou, Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Apr 8, 11:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Machine learning is emerging as a powerful tool to data science and is being applied in almost all subjects. In many applications, the number of features is comparable or even larger than the number of samples, and both grow large. This setting is usually named the high-dimensional regime. In this regime, new challenges and questions arise when it comes to the application of machine learning. In this work, we conduct a high-dimensional performance analysis of some popular classification and regression techniques. In a first part, discriminant analysis classifiers are considered. A major challenge towards the use of these classifiers in practice is that they depend on the inverse of covariance matrices that need to be estimated from training data. Several estimators for the inverse of the covariance matrices can be used. The most common ones are estimators based on the regularization approach. The main advantage of such estimators is their resilience to the sampling noise, making them suitable to high-dimensional settings. In this thesis, we propose new estimators that are shown to yield better performance.
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  Blue LED material beyond Blue for Micro-LED Displays

  Kazuhiro Ohkawa, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Apr 4, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  LED material Displays

  Energy is an indispensable part of our lives. We are challenging energy-saving novel light emitters and clean-energy generation systems at Energy Conversion Devices and Materials (ECO Devices) Laboratory at KAUST. The former is based on MOCVD technology, material science, and device technology. The latter is the nitride photocatalyst invented by Ohkawa. The development of highly-efficient InGaN-based blue LEDs was the topic of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. InGaN-based green LEDs were realized after improving the quality of higher-In-content InGaN. The three primary colors in light are RGB. The current red LEDs are based on InGaP as the active region. If we realize red LEDs by InGaN, we can fabricate the monolithic RGB LEDs in a wafer. Such RGB integration will be a breakthrough for micro-LED displays that are the next generation after the OLED displays. In this seminar, the science of MOCVD, the growth of high-In-content InGaN, and the state-of-the-art InGaN-based red LEDs will be introduced.

Mar 28 - Apr 3, 2021

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  Wireless Magnetic Sensors to Empower the Next Technological Revolution

  Abdullah Almansouri, PhD Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering, KAUST

  Apr 1, 16:00 - 17:00

  KAUST

  The next technological revolution, Industry 4.0, is envisioned as a digitally connected ecosystem where machines and gadgets are driven by artificial intelligence. By 2025, more than 75 billion devices are projected to serve this revolution. Many of which are to be integrated into the fabrics of everyday life in the form of smart wireless sensors. Still, two major challenges should be addressed to realize truly wireless and wearable sensors. First, the sensors should be flexible and stretchable, allowing for comfortable wearing. Second, the electronics should scavenge the energy it requires entirely from the environment, thus, eliminating the need for batteries, which are bulky, create ecological problems, etc. By addressing these two challenges, this dissertation paves the way for truly wearable sensors.
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  Transient Analysis of Electromagnetic and Acoustic Scattering using Second-kind Surface Integral Equations

  Rui Chen, PhD Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering, KAUST

  Mar 31, 16:00 - 18:00

  KAUST

  Time-domain methods are preferred over their frequency-domain counterparts for solving acoustic and electromagnetic scattering problems since they can produce wide-band data from a single simulation. Among the time-domain methods, time-domain surface integral equation solvers have recently found widespread use because they offer several benefits over differential equation solvers. This dissertation develops several second-kind surface integral equation solvers for analyzing transient acoustic scattering from rigid and penetrable objects and transient electromagnetic scattering from perfect electrically conducting and dielectric objects. For acoustically rigid, perfect electrically conducting, and dielectric scatterers, fully explicit marching-on-in-time schemes are developed for solving time domain Kirchhoff, magnetic field, and scalar potential integral equations, respectively.
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  Towards Robust and Accurate Navigation: Theory, Applications, and Future Directions

  Tareq Al-Naffouri, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Mar 28, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Towards Robust Navigation theory Applications Future Directions

  Navigation is an essential requirement for many applications (commercial, retail, military, scientific, ...etc) and in a variety of environments (in-doors, outdoors, space, underwater, and even underground). In this talk, I will overview some of my group's work in localization and navigation focusing on indoor and satellite positioning. The talk will demonstrate how the structure or constraints of the problem can help achieve very accurate localization (e.g. millimeter level indoors) that is robust to Doppler, multipath, and shadowing. The talk will also touch upon various related applications that the group is pursuing in smart health and smart cities. The talk will end with future directions for localization in extreme environments and in the TeraHertz spectrum where localization, environment sensing, and communication converge.

Mar 21 - Mar 27, 2021

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  Advancing Visual Intelligence via Neural System Design

  Hengshuang Zhao, Postdoctoral Fellow, Oxford University

  Mar 21, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Visual Intelligence Neural System design

  Building intelligent visual systems is essential for the next generation of artificial intelligence systems. It is a fundamental tool for many disciplines and beneficial to various potential applications such as autonomous driving, robotics, surveillance, augmented reality, to name a few. An accurate and efficient intelligent visual system has a deep understanding of the scene, objects, and humans. It can automatically understand the surrounding scenes. In general, 2D images and 3D point clouds are the two most common data representations in our daily life. Designing powerful image understanding and point cloud processing systems are two pillars of visual intelligence, enabling the artificial intelligence systems to understand and interact with the current status of the environment automatically. In this talk, I will first present our efforts in designing modern neural systems for 2D image understanding, including high-accuracy and high-efficiency semantic parsing structures, and unified panoptic parsing architecture. Then, we go one step further to design neural systems for processing complex 3D scenes, including semantic-level and instance-level understanding. Further, we show our latest works for unified 2D-3D reasoning frameworks, which are fully based on self-attention mechanisms. In the end, the challenges, up-to-date progress, and promising future directions for building advanced intelligent visual systems will be discussed.

Mar 14 - Mar 20, 2021

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  mm-Sized Wireless Implantable Medical Devices Toward Clinical Diagnostics and Therapeutics

  Pyungwoo Yeon, Postdoctoral Fellow, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

  Mar 14, 16:00 - 17:00

  KAUST

  Implantable and wearable technologies are rapidly emerging and showing great promise in various medical therapeutics and diagnostics. These advances from health monitoring to therapeutic applications reorganize many aspects of daily life. Since the invention of the first implantable cardiac pacemaker for patients with arrhythmia in 1958, many implantable medical devices (IMDs) such as implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and implantable deep brain stimulators (iDBSs) have been developed and have treated millions of patients. These IMDs eventually need wireless powering and communication for 1) eliminating transcutaneous power/data interconnects that elevate the risk of infection and 2) removing bulky batteries to avoid the risk of repeated surgical intervention. They also need small form factors and soft materials to mitigate tissue fibrosis due to foreign body responses. In this talk, I will introduce a new wireless neural interfacing tool within a cubic millimeter that can potentially record large scale neuronal ensembles over large brain area. The discussion will be focused on its building pieces across a wide range of science and engineering disciplines toward translating those into a complete clinically viable IMD. Also, I will present my recent research on RF-to-ultrasound power relay for powering deep mm-scale implants across air/tissue or tissue/skull media, and an all-soft and wireless pressure sensor tags that aim to address the issues of surgical complexity, tethering effect, and foreign body response. Finally, I will conclude the talk by presenting my future research plans toward clinically viable wireless medical diagnostics and therapeutics.

Mar 7 - Mar 13, 2021

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  Generation of Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Modes with Spiral Phase Plate Integrated Laser Source

  Edgars Stegenburgs, Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Mar 10, 12:00 - 14:00

  KAUST

  The objective of this work is to develop a near-infrared laser device capable of emitting orbital angular momentum (OAM) light. The prototyped device must be suitable for compact, energy-saving optical communication applications. Integrated OAM lasers would revolutionize high capacity data transmission over any telecommunication network environment as OAM light can be guided and transmitted through kilometers of optical fibers as well as propagated in free space and underwater.
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  Materials and Devices for Printed Flexible Electronics

  Derya Baran, Assistant Professor, Material Science and Engineering, PSE, KAUST

  Mar 7, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  flexible electronics Flexible electronic devices

  The need for big data that the internet of things (IoT) has created in recent years has turned the focus on integrating the human body in the quest to understand it better, and in turn use such information for detection and prevention of harmful conditions. Applications in which continuous and uninterrupted operation is required, or where the use of external power sources may be challenging demands the use of self-powered autonomous systems. Organic photovoltaic devices are flexible, lightweight, and soft, capable of interacting with the human body and its mechanical demands. Their processability from solutions permits their adaptation to versatile fabrication techniques such as spin coating, roll-to-roll coating and inkjet printing, with benefits including low material usage and freedom of design. In this talk, I will present how organic photovoltaics can be utilized in printed electronics as energy harvesting devices and go through the historical progress of organic/hybrid photovoltaics as well as the main activities that are ongoing in my research lab ‘Omegalab’.

Feb 28 - Mar 6, 2021

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  The fourth wave: ultrawide bandgap compound semiconductors for photonics and electronics

  Xiaohang Li, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Feb 28, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  The fourth wave semiconductors photonics electronics

  Wide bandgap (WBG) compound semiconductors including GaN have shown enormous success in solid-state lighting, display, and electrification in recent decades due to superior properties such as direct bandgap, high electron mobility, and large breakdown field. They have been changing the world by elevating living standards and addressing grand challenges such as global warming. The pioneering researchers have been recognized by numerous accolades including the Nobel Prize and most recently, the Queen Elizabeth Prize. Lately, the III-nitride and III-oxide ultrawide bandgap (UWBG) compound semiconductors with bandgap larger than 3.4 eV have attracted increasing attentions: they have been regarded as the 4th wave/generation after the consequential Si, III-V, and WBG semiconductors. Because the UWBG along with other properties could enable electronics and photonics to operate with significantly greater power and frequency capability and at much shorter far−deep UV wavelengths, respectively, both crucial for human society. Besides, they could be employed for the revolutionary quantum information science as the host and photonic platform. However, extensive multi-disciplinary studies of growth, materials, physics, and devices are essential to unearth the potentials due to the infancy. This seminar would cover the latest research on those aspects. It includes growth of state-of-the-art materials, discovery of unique material properties, and development of a widely adopted device physics framework for photonics and electronics especially short and long wavelength photonic devices.

Feb 21 - Feb 27, 2021

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  High-Dimensional Analysis of Regularized Convex Optimization Problems with Application to Massive MIMO Wireless Communication Systems

  Ayed M. Alrashdi, Ph.D. Student (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Feb 21, 17:00 - 18:00

  KAUST

  In this thesis, we focus on precisely analyzing the high dimensional error performance of such regularized convex optimization problems under the presence of different impairments (such as uncertainties and/or correlations) in the measurement matrix, which has independent Gaussian entries. The precise nature of our analysis allows performance comparison between different types of these estimators and enables us to optimally tune the involved hyperparameters. In particular, we study the performance of some of the most popular cases in linear inverse problems, such as the Least Squares (LS), Regularized Least Squares (RLS), LASSO, Elastic Net, and their box-constrained variants.
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  Smart Meter Data-Driven Load Forecasting and Price Design in the Retail Market

  Dr. Yi Wang, Postdoctoral Researcher, Power Systems Laboratory, ETH Zurich

  Feb 21, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Smart Meter Data-Driven Load forecasting Price design Retail Market

  The widespread popularity of smart meters enables an immense amount of fine-grained smart meter data to be collected. Meanwhile, the deregulation of the power industry, particularly on the delivery side, has continuously been moving forward worldwide. Electricity retailer is one of the main participants in the retail market. This presentation will discuss how an electricity retailer can increase the competitiveness in the retail market by making full use of the fine-grained smart meter data. Since load forecasting is fundamental for various businesses of the retailer, the first part of this presentation will study how to enhance the performance of aggregated load forecasting using the fine-grained smart meter data. Designing customizing prices is an effective way to promote consumer interactions and increase customer stickiness for retailers. The second part of this presentation will introduce a novel data-driven approach for incentive-compatible customizing time-of-use (ToU) price design so that the benefits of both the retailer and consumers can be gained.

Feb 7 - Feb 13, 2021

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  Visible Light Communications Technology and Machine Learning - 2021-02-12

  Dr. Paul Anthony Haigh, Newcastle University, United Kingdom and Dr. Bo Tan, Tampere University, Finland

  Feb 12, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  vlc

  In this webinar we will give an overview of several key technologies related to our special issues in Frontiers of Communications and Networks; (1) visible light communications (VLC) and (2) applications of machine learning in optical and wireless communication systems.
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  Ariadne: Building safe autonomy with unproven algorithms

  Eric Feron, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Feb 7, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Ariadne safe autonomy unproven algorithms

  With the advent of increasingly intelligent algorithms, robots are capable of planning and performing increasingly challenging and creative tasks. Safety, however, remains an essential requirement on robotic behaviors. It is also a property that is hard or impossible to prove for virtually all intelligent algorithms of practical value. Ariadne is a model-based paradigm that enables the safe operation of many robotic systems, even though the algorithms involved with the operation may not be verifiable. Ariadne, or "plan B" engineering, will be illustrated in various current Robotics contexts derived from Ariadne's own Greek mythology, railroad systems, nuclear energy production, air transportation, and others.

Jan 31 - Feb 6, 2021

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  Mechatronics: Synergy throughout Systems

  Shehab Ahmed, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Jan 31, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Mechatronics Synergy throughout Systems

  Actuators, electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, oil rigs and smart cities are all examples of complex systems that have evolved over time to better address societal needs. Mechatronics, the synergistic integration of electrical, mechanical and computing, has powered this evolution and enabled higher power density actuators, increased hosting of renewable energy in power grids, improved drilling efficiency and responsive cities. In this talk, I will share research highlights from the Mechatronics and Energy Systems Research Group (MERGE) to demonstrate value creation through engineered synergies.

Jan 24 - Jan 30, 2021

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  Biosensors challenges and opportunities

  Khaled Salama, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Jan 24, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Biosensors challenges opportunities

  No summary is available.

Dec 20 - Dec 26, 2020

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  What’s the Story with UAV Cellular Communications?

  Prof. Giovanni Geraci, Assistant Professor, University Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain

  Dec 22, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  UV Communications

  What will it take for UAVs—and the associated ecosystem—to take off? Arguably, ubiquitous high-capacity links paired with hyper-reliable command and control all along. And indeed, meeting these aspirations may entail a full-blown mobile network support. While the understanding of UAV cellular communications has been advancing, many fundamental challenges remain to be addressed, with new applications demanding original solutions. In this talk, we blend academic and industrial views, navigating from 4G to 6G UAV use cases, requirements, and enabling technologies

Dec 13 - Dec 19, 2020

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  Wireless Communications using Light - not all wireless is at RF

  Prof. Steve Hranilovic, Associate Dean, McMaster University, Canada and Dr. Imran Shafique Ansari, Assistant Professor, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

  Dec 15, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  FSO systems

  Due to the increasing scarcity of RF spectrum and growing interference due to multiple users, deploying next generation high-speed wireless networks is becoming increasingly difficult. The use of unlicensed optical bands for wireless communications has been heralded as an exciting development for future broadband access for indoor, underwater and space communication links.

Dec 6 - Dec 12, 2020

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  Redesigning CMOS Electronics: What, Why and How?

  Dec 6, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Redesigning CMOS electronics

  A little more than half of the world’s population enjoy benefits of information technology which is enabled by complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electronics. Going forward, we will enjoy further augmentation of quality of life through integrated CMOS electronic systems consisting of logic, memory, communication devices, energy storage and harvester, power management units, sensors and actuators. Their main attributes will include but not limited to high performance and storage capacity for data management; seamless connectivity; energy efficiency; hyper-scale integration density; appropriate functionalities based on their applications and operational environment; reliability and safety; and finally affordability and simplicity to expand their user base to include those who do not have any access to them today. Even using last fifty years’ wealth of knowledge and experience, such integrated electronic system development and deployment is a monumental engineering challenge. From that perspective, redesigning CMOS electronics might seem to be an overly ambitious goal specially, if that means transformation of such physically rigid complex electronic systems into a fully flexible one. To address this intriguing challenge, we have developed a unique coin like architecture based soft singular platform, which can be used as the building block of standalone fully flexible CMOS electronic system with all the aforementioned characteristics. We have devised an effective heterogeneous integration strategy based on mature and reliable CMOS technology only to integrate hybrid materials and diverse set of devices for multi-disciplinary applications. These will be the focus of this talk.

Nov 29 - Dec 5, 2020

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  Conquering the Terahertz Band: From Theory to Practice

  Prof. Josep M. Jornet, Northeastern University, in Boston, MA

  Dec 1, 15:45 - 17:15

  KAUST

  THz sensing THz signal source

  The need for higher data-rates and more ubiquitous connectivity for an ever-increasing number of wirelessly connected devices motivates the exploration of uncharted spectral bands. In this context, Terahertz (THz)-band (0.1–10 THz) communication is envisioned as a key wireless technology of the next decade. The very large bandwidth available at THz frequencies (tens to hundreds of consecutive GHz) can alleviate the spectrum scarcity problem while enabling wireless Terabit-per-second (Tb/s) links in personal and local area networks, backhaul for urban and rural areas, and even space networks.
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  Mobile Microrobotics

  Hussein Hussein, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 29, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  mobile Microrobotics

  The implementation of robotic solutions to accomplish automated tasks in industrial sectors has tremendously increased the human performance capacity and enhanced the cost, quality and delivery time for different tasks and products. Having already proven their utility at the macroscale, robots also show their usefulness when we approach the infinitely small dimensions, for applications such as inspection, cell manipulation, assembly, biopsy and drug delivery. The way to the microworld is not that simple; reducing the size of robots from macro scale to micro scale cannot be accomplished by merely miniaturizing the different parts of an existing robot. The variation in the scale of physical effects with the size scale and the difficulties of fabrication and assembly at the micro scale make the macro-solutions for actuation and sensing unsuitable for microdevices. Other actuation mechanisms with deformable structures and integrated sensing solutions are more efficient at microscale and compatible with microfabrication limitations. This talk focuses on different aspects related to mobile microrobots, including limitations and challenges, actuation mechanisms, power delivery, and current works in our team for the development of mobile microrobots.

Nov 22 - Nov 28, 2020

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  The Tetracopter: A modular, self-similar flying robot

  Eric Feron, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 26, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Modular robotics deals with robots that are an assemblage of smaller sized and often identical robots. The benefits of modular robots are many, chief among them being how easily they can be transported from one location to another. Moreover, their size can be adjusted according to the task at hand without requiring extensive redesign or specialization, therefore making them the object of significant research efforts.
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  Energy-Efficient Non-Orthogonal Multicast and Unicast Transmission of Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems with SWIPT

  Prof. Minghua Xia, Sun Yat-sen University, China & Prof. Zilong Liu,University of Essex, United Kingdom

  Nov 24, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  SWIPT

  To suit massive connectivity of machine-type communications in smart cities, this talk discusses the energy-efficient resource allocation for layered-division multiplexing (LDM) based non-orthogonal multicast and unicast transmission in cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where each user equipment (UE) performs wireless information and power transfer simultaneously. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is an emerging paradigm for the enabling of massive connectivity in 5G networks and beyond.
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  Efficient and Accurate Numerical Methods for Transient Electromagnetic Analysis - 2020

  Hakan Bagci, Associate Dean for Students, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering

  Nov 22, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Efficient numerical Methods Transient electromagnetic

  Electromagnetic devices and systems are at the heart of technological advances revolutionizing many fields of science and engineering including energy management, biomedical electronics, communications and computing, and even environmental monitoring and civil design. Many of these systems are electrically large, their frequency of operation has a wide dynamic range, their device components are geometrically intricate with dimensions varying by orders of magnitude, and finally their optimal design requires many repetitions of characterizations with different parameters.

Nov 15 - Nov 21, 2020

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  Start your Research Journey at KAUST - Master and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Statistics

  Aigars Ekers, Assistant Dean, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering

  Nov 18, 16:00 - 17:00

  KAUST

  Did you know that courses are taught in English at KAUST? Did you know that the faculty and students are from more than 100 countries? Did you know that you will be fully funded when studying at KAUST? What you will learn from this webinar: Life at KAUST: What are KAUST and CEMSE? Degrees and Academic Programs Research Areas and Lab Facilities Eligibility and Admission Requirements KAUST Fellowship: Benefits of studying at KAUST How to Apply?
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  Waves Functional Materials - 2020-11-15

  Ying Wu, Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Nov 15, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  waves Functional Materials

  Wave functional materials are artificial materials that can control wave propagation as wish. In this talk, I will give a brief review on the progress of wave functional materials and reveal the secret behind the engineering of these materials to achieve desired properties. In particular, I will focus on our contributions on metamaterials and metasurfaces. I will introduce the development of effective medium, a powerful tool in modeling wave functional materials, followed by some illustrative examples demonstrating the intriguing properties, such as redirection, emission rate enhancement, wave steering and cloaking.

Nov 8 - Nov 14, 2020

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  Control Theoretic Approaches to Computational Modeling and Risk Mitigation for Large Crowd Management

  Mohammed M. Alrashed, M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 11, 20:00 - 21:00

  KAUST

  resource management risk assessment computational models

  Abstract We develop a computational framework for risk mitigation in high population density events. With an increased global population, the frequency of high population density events is naturally increased. Therefore, risk-free crowd management plans are critical for efficient mobility, convenient daily life, resource management, and most importantly mitigation of any inadvertent incidents and accidents such as stampedes. The status-quo for crowd management plans is the use of human experience/expert advice. However, most often such dependency on human experience is insufficient, flawed
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  Civil drones traffic management: Wireless communication for safe UAV

  Prof. Sofie Pollin, KU Leuven

  Nov 10, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  UAV

  In this webinar, we describe the common terminology for these two communities. First, the traffic management system architecture, requirements, terminology, and services are discussed. A quick overview of existing technologies that can be useful for aerial deconfliction. Next, the focus will shift to wireless technologies used for the tactical (while flying) deconfliction: ADS-B, p2p LoRa, WiFi, FLARM.
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  A Novel HVDC Architecture for Offshore Wind Farm Applications

  Otavio Dezem Bertozzi Junior, MS Student, Physical Science and Engineering

  Nov 10, 15:00 - 16:00

  KAUST

  Novel HVDC architecture Offshore wind

  Advances in power electronics have enabled many renewable energy applications. Wind energy harnessing is very promising and offshore farm installations have grown considerably in the past years. In this thesis, we introduce a novel power converter solution for the parallel connection of high-power offshore wind turbines, suitable for HVDC collection and transmission. For the parallel operation of energy sources in an HVDC grid, DC link voltage control is required. The proposed system is based on a full-power rated uncontrolled diode bridge rectifier in series with a partially-rated fully-controlled thyristor bridge rectifier. The thyristor bridge acts as a voltage regulator to ensure the flow of the desired current through each branch, where a reactor is placed in series for filtering of the DC current. AC filters are installed on the machine side to mitigate harmonic content. The mathematical modeling of the system is derived and the control design procedure is discussed. Guidelines for equipment and device specifications are presented. The concept is validated through simulation, and an experimental framework for testing of the system is suggested.
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  UAV Enabled IoT Network Designs for Enhanced Estimation, Detection, and Connectivity

  Osama Bushnaq, Ph.D. (former), Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 9, 11:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  The Internet of Things (IoT) is a foundational building block for the upcoming information revolution and imminent smart-world era. Particularly, the IoT bridges the cyber domain to everything and anything within our physical world which enables unprecedented ubiquitous monitoring, connectivity, and smart control. In this Ph.D. defense, we present Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) enabled IoT network designs for enhanced estimation, detection, and connectivity. The utilization of UAVs can offer an extra level of flexibility which results in more advanced and efficient connectivity and data aggregation for the IoT devices.
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  Developing smart systems to connect communities.

  Ahmed Eltawil, Associate Dean for Research, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering

  Nov 8, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  smart systems connect communities

  In this talk, we address fundamental questions that should be asked when contemplating future smart and connected systems, namely, How, Where and What? How can we design computing and communication nodes that best utilize resources in a way that is cognizant of both the abilities of the platform, as well as the requirements of the network? Where are the nodes deployed? By understanding the context of deployment, one can architect unique solutions that are currently unimaginable. With the transformation to diverse applications such as body area networking, critical infrastructure monitoring, precision agriculture, autonomous driving etc., the need for innovative solutions becomes even more amplified. What benefit can be inferred from the data gathered by nodes in the capacity of computing, communication and sensing? The talk will discuss how recent advances in wireless computing and communication nodes can be harnessed to serve the multitude of deployment scenarios required to empower communities of the future with smart and connected systems.

Nov 1 - Nov 7, 2020

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  Using Massive MIMO Arrays to Reject Radar-Generated Interference and to Perform Integrated Sensing and Communications

  Prof. Stefano Buzzi, University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale, Italy

  Nov 3, 16:00 - 17:15

  KAUST

  MIMO

  This webinar will explore the potentiality of massive MIMO arrays in a scenario where radar and communication tasks coexist. The first part of the talk will be devoted to the discussion of a scenario where a wireless network is to co-exist with an external radar system sharing the same frequency band. The second part of the talk will be instead focused on a scenario where a base station equipped with a large scale antenna array simultaneously perform the task of radar surveillance of the surrounding environment and of data communication with mobile users.
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  Design and topological optimization of nanophotonic devices

  Ronghui Lin, Ph.D. Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 2, 10:30 - 12:30

  KAUST

  Nanophotonic research has a huge influence on various aspects of modern society, such as communication, commercial products, biochemistry, and information processing. A central topic in the research of nanophotonics is the geometrical optimization of the nanostructures since the geometries are deeply related to the Mie resonances and the localized surface plasmon resonances in dielectric and metallic nanomaterials. When many nanostructures are assembled to form a metamaterial, the tuning of the geometrical parameters can bring even more profound effects, such as bound states in the continuum (BIC) with infinite quality factors (Q factors). Moreover, with the development of nanofabrication technologies, there is a trend of integrating nanostructures in the vertical direction, which provides more degrees of freedom for controlling the device performance and functionality. In this dissertation, we explore how the geometrical changes of the nanostructures influence the nanophotonic devices, furthermore, we utilize machine learning techniques to actively control the topologies of the devices to enhance their performances.
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  Ultraviolet semiconductor technologies for COVID-19 and beyond

  Xiaohang Li, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Nov 1, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Ultraviolet semiconductor technologies COVID-19

  COVID-19 is a wake-up call for public health and safety. Since the pandemic began, the ultraviolet (UV) technologies have been widely employed in numerous places to contain and eliminate the viruses. Although UV light is nonchemical and does not contaminate the environment, however, most of the UV light today comes from the toxic mercury lamps. In our lab and many institutions in the world, researchers are developing semiconductor-based UV technologies that are compact, reliable, and nontoxic. This seminar shows the research background and briefly discusses the research progress made by our team in a few key areas including material growth, physics, and device fabrication for UV lasers, LEDs, and photodetectors.

Oct 25 - Oct 31, 2020

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  Webinar on Resource Allocation in Cloud-Radio Access Networks and Fog-Radio Access Networks for B5G Systems

  Omar Knio, Professor, Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences

  Oct 27, 15:45 - 17:15

  KAUST

  Fog-Radio Access cloud-radio access

  First Speaker: Megumi Kaneko, National Institute of Informatics, Japan. Talk Title: Resource Allocation in NOMA-Based Fog Radio Access Networks. In this talk, I will first describe the potential benefits offered by the integration of NOMA in an FRAN architecture for achieving the specific objectives of use cases envisioned in B5G, in terms of throughput, latency, reliability and energy efficiency. Second Speaker: Bruno Clerckx, Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Talk Title: Rate-Splitting Multiple Access and its Applications to Cloud-Enabled Platforms. This talk argues that to efficiently cope with the high throughput, reliability, heterogeneity of Quality-of-Service (QoS), and massive connectivity requirements of future multi-antenna wireless networks, multiple access and multiuser communication system design need to depart from the two extreme interference management strategies, namely fully treat interference as noise (as commonly used in 5G, MU-MIMO, CoMP, Massive MIMO, millimetre wave MIMO) and fully decode interference (as in NOMA).
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  Beyond Solid-State Lighting: Miniaturization and Integration of Nitride-based Visible LEDs

  Zhe Zhuang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 25, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Solid-State Lighting Miniaturization Integration Nitride-based Visible LEDs

  This talk will give an overview of the research of III-nitride based visible light-emitting diodes (LEDs) from the KAUST Energy Conversion Devices and Materials (ECO Devices) Laboratory (https://ecodevices.kaust.edu.sa/Pages/Overview.aspx). III-nitride based visible LEDs have achieved tremendous success in the field of solid-state lighting and dominated the lighting markets in the past decades. This technique becomes mature, and the luminous efficacy of LED devices approaches the theoretical maximum limit.

Oct 18 - Oct 24, 2020

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  Aerospace Systems Research at KAUST, an uplifting experience

  Eric Feron, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Oct 21, 12:00 - 13:00

  KAUST

  Aerospace Systems research KAUST

  Aerospace Engineering is the source of much dreaming and worrying in most people's imagination. As such, it constitutes a marvelous support for the development and application of numerous disciplines, chief among them are aerodynamics, structures, flight and orbital mechanics. With time however, information technologies are progressively becoming the costliest activity within the aerospace engineering systems design phase. Indeed, they stand as the core elements of avionics systems, airline operations, air traffic control, spacecraft engineering, and planetary exploration, among others. Such subjects have been bringing much joy and teaching many lessons to your speaker for the past 30 years and will keep doing so, hopefully, for the next three decades.
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  Visible Light Communications Technology and Machine Learning - 2020-10-20

  Paul Anthony Haigh, Newcastle University, United Kingdom and Dr. Bo Tan, Tampere University, Finland

  Oct 20, 15:45 - 17:15

  KAUST

  machine learning Visible light communications

  In this webinar we will give an overview of several key technologies related to our special issues in Frontiers of Communications and Networks; (1) visible light communications (VLC) and (2) applications of machine learning in optical and wireless communication systems.