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Faculty Profile

Alyssa Apsel

Department: ECE

Title: Associate Professor

Personal Web Site:
http://oevlsi.ece.cornell.edu

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Degrees earned:
 B.S. Swarthmore College 1995
 M.S. California Institute of Technology 1996
 PhD Johns Hopkins University 2002

Address:
Office:
 412 Phillips Hall
 Ithaca, NY, 14853

Office Phone: (607) 255-3962

Biography:

In 1997 I began my work with Andreas Andreou in the Sensory Communications and Microsystems Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University as an Abel Wolman Fellow. While a student there I developed my research interests in the area of optoelectronic VLSI and Silicon on Sapphire CMOS. As a student I developed the first published Silicon on Sapphire CMOS optical receiver array and coauthored two patent applications related to this work.

In August 2002 I joined the faculty in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University where I have continued to work in optoelectronic VLSI as head of the Optoelectronic VLSI laboratory and the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Since 2002, my research has focused on optoelectronic CMOS systems and architectures, short distance interconnects, and high speed CMOS interfaces. Based on this work, I have been the recipient of a best paper award at the 2000 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems, an NSF Early Career Award in 2004, and have been named to MIT Technology Review’s top 100 young innovators for 2004. I am also an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, and a member of the technical program committees for SPIE Optics East, Photonics West, IEEE LEOS meeting, and IEEE ISCAS.

Research interests:

My primary area of interest is in optoelectronic VLSI systems in CMOS. The focus of this work is toward the development of low power integrated CMOS systems which utilize the speed and computational benefits of optical processing and communication to complement the computational power and ubiquity of standard CMOS systems. A large portion of my work is devoted to the investigation intra-chip optical interconnects and their potential impact on computer architectures. We also focus on integration of photonics with commercial VLSI platforms in a cost effective and efficient manner. This work involves design of low power and high bandwidth circuits for optical interconnect as well as architecture development and work in photonic devices. We also work with various sensor interface circuits and control circuits for applications within hybrid analog/digital/optoelctronic and sensory systems.

Broadly, I am interested in the fields of analog and mixed mode CMOS VLSI design, integrated photonics, and Silicon on Sapphire CMOS design.

Selected Publications:

Apsel, Alyssa B.; Andreou, Andreas G.. A low-power silicon on sapphire CMOS optoelectronic receiver using low- and high-threshold devices. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers 52, 253-261 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCSI.2004.840289

Pappu, Anand M.; Apsel, Alyssa B.. Analysis of intrachip electrical and optical fanout. Applied Optics 44, 6361-6372 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/AO.44.006361

Yan, Dong; Apsel, Alyssa; Lal, Amit. Fabrication and electromechanical characterization of silicon on insulator based electrostatic micro-scanners. Smart Materials and Structures 14, 775-784 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0964-1726/14/4/037