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Speaker and Planning Committee Biographical Information
CHARLES AHN, Planning Committee, is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Applied Physics, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Physics and chair of the Department of Applied Physics at Yale University. Dr. Ahn also serves as director of the Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. Dr. Ahn earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in applied physics from Stanford University. He joined Yale after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. His research focuses on the physics of complex oxide materials, particularly on the physics and technology of thin ferroelectric films, as well as the control of density in superconductors and semiconductors with ferroelectric gates. Dr. Ahn has received the American Vacuum Society’s Peter Mark Memorial Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Yale Junior Faculty Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and a NSF CAREER Award.
GIULIA GALLI, Planning Committee, is the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Institute for Molecular Engineering and professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. Dr. Galli also holds a senior scientist position at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). Prior to joining the University of Chicago and ANL, she was professor of chemistry and physics at the University of California, Davis (2005-2013) and head of the Quantum Simulations group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; 1998-2005). Dr.
Galli holds a Ph.D. in physics from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is a recipient of the LLNL Science and Technology Award, the Department of Energy (DOE) Award of Excellence, the 2018 Materials Research Society Theory Award, the 2019 David Adler Lectureship in Materials Physics, and the 2019 Nelson W. Taylor Lecture Award. Dr. Galli served as chair of the Extreme Physics and Chemistry of Carbon Directorate of the Deep Carbon Observatory in 2010-2013, and she is currently director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM), established by DOE in 2015. Dr. Galli’s research activity is focused on the development and use of theoretical and computational methods to understand and predict the properties and behavior of materials (solids, liquids, and nanostructures) from first principles.
TOM C. LUBENSKY, Planning Committee, is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lubensky’s primary research interests have been, and continue to be, theoretical condensed matter physics with emphasis on soft matter, liquid crystals, and, most recently, on the new field of topological mechanics. He has spent his entire career, apart from postdoctoral positions at Orsay in Paris and Brown University, at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as a department chair from 2001 to 2009. Dr. Lubensky has held visiting positions at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and in Lyon, at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris, and at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, fellow of the APS and the AAAS, and honored member of the International Liquid Crystal Society. Dr. Lubensky is a recipient of the Sloan and Guggenheim fellowships and of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize of the APS. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University. He has served on a number of national and international committees, including National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviews of the Center for Neutron Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the 2018 Decadal Survey of Materials Science, and external reviews of several U.S. and international departments of physics. Dr. Lubensky is co-author with Paul Chaikin of a prominent graduate-level textbook, Principles of Condensed Matter Physics.
LESLIE MOMODA, Planning Committee, is currently the vice president for strategy at HRL Laboratories, LLC, in Malibu, California. Dr. Momoda leads the strategic planning, technology transfer activities, and customer and LLC member (Boeing and General Motors) interfaces for HRL. Prior to this assignment, she was the director for the Sensors and Materials Laboratory, where she led the
research and development of advanced structural, battery, architected, and nanomaterials and characterization as well as cutting-edge microelectromechanical sensors and infrared detector materials. As a research department manager, Dr. Momoda was in charge of several major projects in the area of smart materials, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Compact Hybrid Actuation and Morphing Airframe Structures programs, materials for thermal management, gas sensing, fuel cell components, and the modeling and prediction of materials reliability. Dr. Momoda’s initial research focused on mixed metal oxide materials for electronic, optical, and chemical sensor applications. She received her B.S. degree in chemical engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Momoda has authored or co-authored 18 published papers and has 16 issued patents. She is also involved with engineering advisory boards at several Southern California universities.
IVAN SCHULLER, Planning Committee, is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Schuller is a leading researcher in nanoscience and condensed matter physics and is the director of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center on Quantum Materials for Energy Efficient Neuromorphic Computing (QMEENC). He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Northwestern University in 1976. From 1978 to 1987, Dr. Schuller was a senior physicist and group leader at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). Since 1987, he has been a professor of physics at UCSD; in addition to this position, he is also layer leader—materials and devices of CAL-(IT)2 Institute and director of AFOSR-MURI at UCSD. He held visiting professorships at the Catholic University, Santiago, Chile; Universidad del Valle, Colombia; Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium; and Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule, Aachen, Germany. Dr. Schuller is also the recipient of numerous prizes, including the David Adler Lectureship (2003), Alexander von Humboldt Award (2000), Wheatley Award (1999), DOE Outstanding Scientific Accomplishments (1987), a Doctor Honoris Causa at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2005), and the Lise Meitner Lectureship Award (2015). Dr. Schuller is president of the board of trustees and scientific advisory committee at the IMDEA Nanoscience Institute. He was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.
CATHERINE SCHUMAN, Speaker, is a research scientist in computational data analytics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Dr. Schuman received her doctorate in computer science from the University of Tennessee in 2015, where she completed her dissertation on the use of evolutionary algorithms to train spiking neural networks for neuromorphic systems. She is continuing her study of models and algorithms for neuromorphic computing, as well as other topics in artificial
intelligence and machine learning, as part of her work at ORNL. Dr. Schuman is also an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, where she, along with four other professors, leads a neuromorphic research team made up of more than 25 faculty members, graduate student researchers, and undergraduate student researchers.
MAREK SKOWRONSKI, Speaker, obtained his Ph.D. degree in solid-state physics from Warsaw University (Poland). Dr. Skowronski’s postdoctoral appointment was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he used junction spectroscopy to study compound semiconductors. This was followed by work at Cabot Corporation on growth of compound semiconductors. In 1988, he moved to Carnegie Mellon University, where he focuses on deposition of thin films for electronic applications, fabrication of devices for energy-efficient electronics and neuromorphic computing, and electron microscopy.
JOHN PAUL STRACHAN, Speaker and Moderator, is an HPE master technologist and leads the Rebooting Computing team at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. Key areas of interest are computing applications in machine learning, network security, and optimization problem solving. Dr. Strachan has a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University.
DMITRI STRUKOV, Speaker and Planning Committee, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Dr. Strukov’s research broadly concerns different aspects of computation, in particular addressing questions on how to efficiently perform computation on various levels of abstraction. This research spans different disciplines, including material science, device physics, circuit design, high-level computer architecture, and algorithms, with an emphasis on the emerging device technologies. Over the past decade, his major focus has been on neuromorphic computing and, more recently, on hardware security implementations with resistive switching devices (“memristors”) and floating gate memories. Prior to joining UCSB, Dr. Strukov worked as a postdoctoral associate at Hewlett Packard Laboratories (January 2007 to June 2009) on various aspects of nanoelectronic devices and systems. He received an M.S. in applied physics and mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1999 and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stony Brook University in New York in 2006. Dr. Strukov is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
A. ALEC TALIN, Speaker, received a B.A. in chemistry from UCSD in 1989 and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from UCLA in 1995. Dr. Talin is a principal member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories; an adjunct
fellow at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology; and an adjunct associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining Sandia in 2002, he spent 6 years as a research scientist at the Motorola Corporate Labs, Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Talin’s research interests include charge transport in nanostructures, contacts, novel electronic materials, solid-state batteries, and photoelectrochemistry.
R. STANLEY WILLIAMS, Speaker and Planning Committee, is an award-winning researcher in nanotechnology and a professor at Texas A&M University. Dr. Williams is also a senior fellow and was the founding director of the Quantum Science Research Laboratory at Hewlett Packard credited with developing and demonstrating the first solid-state memristor. Dr. Williams earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical physics from Rice University in 1974 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978. After graduating, he worked at Bell Labs before joining the faculty at UCLA, where he served as a professor from 1980 to 1995. Dr. Williams then joined Hewett Packard Laboratories as director of its Information and Quantum Systems Laboratory. Dr. Williams has had many students and colleagues who are now leading researchers in the field of memristive materials for neuromorphic computing applications.
THOMAS A. WITTEN, Planning Committee, is the Homer J. Livingston Professor of Physics in the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago. Dr. Witten is a theoretical physicist who specializes in the study of polymers, complex fluids, and aggregation phenomena, looking at the mathematical laws that govern these unconventional forms of matter. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the APS. Other honors include the APS 2002 Polymer Physics Prize and serving in 2010 as the Lorentz Professor at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
