Webinars for Young Excellence: Transforming Academic Research into Commercial Venture by Harish Krishnaswamy and Benton Calhoun

Date

2023-04-21

Time

9:30 AM EST

Location

Virtual

Region

IEEE Region 1 (Northeastern USA)

Contact

Aeisha VanBuskirk – a.vanbuskirk@ieee.org

Sponsorship

Sponsor

Presenter

Harish Krishnaswamy and Benton Calhoun

Description

Abstract: As a graduate student or young researcher, you might be curious about how to “commercialize” your research. You probably have an exciting idea for a startup based on your research, but you don’t know how to transform it into a commercially viable prototype. You might think about starting a company but have difficulty deciding what should spin out. Moving ideas from lab and research papers to the market requires a thorough decision-making process, market research, time management, and all the tool sets that are beyond what can be imagined! In this episode, we invite two seasoned professionals who had successful experiences turning their research in solid-state circuits into valuable products. They will share their personal journey and insights on how research work can be effectively commercialized and promoted. After their sharing, they will also take the audiences’ questions.

Speaker Bio:

Harish Krishnaswamy received the B.Tech. degree in electrical engineer- ing from IIT Madras, Chennai, India, in 2001, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA, in 2003 and 2009, respectively.In 2009, he joined the Electrical Engineering Department, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, where he is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the Columbia High-Speed and Millimeter-Wave IC Laboratory (CoSMIC). In 2017, he co-founded MixComm Inc., Chatham, NJ, USA, a venture-backed start-up, to commercialize CoSMIC Laboratory’s advanced wireless research. MixComm was acquired in February 2022 by Sivers Semiconductors for $155M, where he is currently CTO-Wireless and Head of the US Development Unit. 

His research interests include integrated devices, circuits, and systems for a variety of RF, millimeter-wave (mmWave), and sub-mmWave applications.

Dr. Krishnaswamy was a recipient of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper in 2007, the Best Thesis in Experimental Research Award from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2009, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award in 2011, the 2014 IBM Faculty Award, the Best Demo Award at the 2017 IEEE ISSCC, the best student paper awards at the 2015, 2018, and 2020 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium and the 2020 IEEE International Microwave Symposium, the 2021 IEEE MTT-S Microwave Magazine Best Paper Award, and the 2019 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award. He has been a member of the technical program committee of several conferences, including the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference and the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium. He has also served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society and is a member for the DARPA Microelectronics Exploratory Council.

 

Benton H. Calhoun received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, in 2000. He received the M.S. degree and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 2002 and 2006, respectively. In January 2006, he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, where he is now a Professor. His research has emphasized energy efficient and sub-threshold circuit design for self-powered, batteryless wireless sensing systems. Dr. Calhoun is a co-author of Sub-threshold Design for Ultra Low-Power Systems (Springer, 2006), author of Design Principles for Digital CMOS Integrated Circuit Design (NTS Press, 2012), and has over 250 peer reviewed publications and 31 issued US patents that contribute to the field of energy efficient circuits and systems for self-powered and energy constrained applications. He is a Campus Director and Technical Thrust Leader in the NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST). He co-founded and is co-CTO at Everactive, Inc., which is selling self-powered, energy harvesting wireless sensing solutions in the industrial IoT market. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors.