Wei Wang - Panel Chair and Panel

We are pleased to announce Wei Wang as Panel Chair for Nano-Net 2008. Dr. Wang is an Assistant Professor and Senior Research Scientist of Nanoscale Engineering with a Ph.D., in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and a B.S., in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Beijing University of Aeronautics, Beijing, China. His main research areas include: modeling and simulation of nanoscale devices and interconnects, CMOS-nano hybrid circuits, 3D IC, FPGA and ASIC design.

The panel he will chair is titled, "Using Advanced Micro/Nano-electronic Technology to Establish Neuromorphic Systems Panel" and will include among others, Prof. Grarrett Rose, ECE Department of Polytech University; Dr. Vladimir Gorelik, Founder of Neuronix; Prof. Masud Chowdhury, ECE Department, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Dr. Mathew Hynd, Wadsworth, Albany, NY. Other panelists will be announced as they are confirmed.

To start the panel, several questions will be raised regarding the challenges of designing and building devices, circuits, and systems for neuromorphic applications. Then, each panelist will speak for 10-20 minutes about their perspectives to these challenges. Then, the audiences can ask questions to the panel.

Some of the questions asked will be:

In the device level, what is current research status using the CMOS-related technology (analog or mixed signal) to build neuromorphic systems? What are the main challenges? Can CMOS-nano hybrid approach really be an efficient and feasible approach and show improvement over the CMOS-based neuromorphic systems? Some panelists are using CMOS, some are using nanodevices. They will have different perspectives.

In the circuit level, should we use simplified synapses/neurons (digital multivalue) or complicated analog circuitries? Some panelists are suggesting to use complicated synapses/neurons that really mimick the human system (analog) but are difficult to build. Some panelists are using a binary or mutlivalue digital circuit to build a simplified synapse/neuron.

The panel can discuss these different approaches.

In the system and architecture level, what is the impact of the model, algorithm and architecture of the neuromorphic system impact to the hardware development? Since the real human cortex is a 3D structure, is it necessary to use 3D IC architecture to build such systems?