Events Calendar

2010 - 2011 Munushian Visiting Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Carver Mead, Professor, California Institute of Technology

Talk Title: The Next Revolution in Physical Law

Abstract: For the past 50 years, Carver Mead has dedicated his research, teaching, and public presentation to the physics and technology of electron devices. This effort has been divided among basic physics, practical devices, and seeing the solid state as a medium for the realization of novel and enormously concurrent computing structures. He has made a number of contributions, with his most recent listed below:



Biography: With M. A. Mahowald, described the first analog silicon retina (61). The approach to silicon models of certain neural computations expressed in this chip, and its successors, foreshadowed a totally new class of physically based computations inspired by the neural paradigm. More recent results demonstrated that a wide range of visual and auditory computations of enormous complexity can be carried out in minimal area and with minute energy dissipation compared with digital implementations (1984). The book Analog VLSI and Neural Systems was published (52). This book condensed the insights gained during the previous eight years of work into a single volume, accessible to students with a wide range of backgrounds. Several recent reviews have spelled out in some detail the compelling advantages of realizing adaptive systems directly in analog VLSI. Reduction of system power dissipation by a factor of 10,000, and of silicon area by a factor of 100 are being demonstrated (1984). Experience gained in using photo-response of semiconductor structures for barrier-energy and band-gap studies led to system-level structures that sensed and processed images in various ways. With numerous collaborators, a large variety of imaging structures were developed. One branch of this effort resulted in CMOS imagers, now the most prevalent of all image sensors. A particular subset of these, the X3 sensors, have produced some of the finest images ever captured by any photographic technology (1985 – 1998). Throughout the entire period, worked to bring about a general awareness of Computation as a physical process, rather than purely a mathematical one. Strongly advocated the importance of unifying technology and architecture into a single discipline, and emphasized the importance of this unity for the future of the field at large (1972 – 2000). The book Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism, published by MIT Press, unifies electromagnetic phenomena with the quantum nature of matter (1) (2000). Recent work on Collective Electrodynamics is evolving an entire introductory level physics course based on macroscopic quantum systems. This approach allows students to develop a deep intuition for fundamental physical processes by way of simple laboratory experiments (2007 – Present).

Host: EE-Electrophysics

More Info: http://ee.usc.edu/news/munushian

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Marilyn Poplawski

Event Link: http://ee.usc.edu/news/munushian