News & Events
Distinguished Speaker Series

The purpose of this series is to attract the most distinguished researchers from around the world to talk about their work and their vision for the field. The lectures are addressed to the entire ECE department, and they are at a level that people with diverse backgrounds can understand.

We encourage everybody in the department and the Northwestern community to attend.

Upcoming Speakers



Previous Speakers

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Speakers in 2022 

 

Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky

Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Israel Institute of Technology
"Making Real Memristive Processing-in-Memory Faster and Reliable"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. John P. Prineas

Professor, Department of Physics, University of Iowa
"Compound Semiconductor Innovation and Antimonide Infrared Emitters: Opportunities and Challenges"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. Ermin Wei

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University
"Flexible and Faithful Federated Learning Methods"

Dr. Xuezhou (Jack) Zhang

Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University
"Representation Learning for General-sum Low-rank Markov Games"
Hosted by: Prof. Ermin Wei

Prof. Massimiliano Di Ventra

Professor, Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego
"MemComputing: Fundamentals and Applications"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. Hai Zhou

Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University
"Attacks and Defenses in Logic Encryption"
Hosted by: Prof. Jie Gu

Prof. Antoine Lesage-Landry

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal & GERAD
"Optimally Scheduling Public Safety Power Shutoffs"
Hosted by: Prof. Ermin Wei

Prof. Kai Ni

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology
"Ferro-Electronics: From Memory to Computing"
Hosted by: Prof. Jie Gu

Prof. Onur Mutlu

Professor of Computer Science, ETH Zurich
"The Story of RowHammer"
Hosted by: Prof. Russ Joseph

Prof. Deming F. Chen

Abel Bliss Professor, Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Programmability, Scalability, and Security for Reconfigurable Computing in the Cloud"
Hosted by: Prof. Jie Gu

Prof. Michael E. Flatté

Professor of Radiology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa
"Coherent Magnonics for Quantum Information Science"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Dr. Daniel Kim

Professor of Radiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
"Increasing the value of cardiovascular MRI by making it simpler and faster"
Hosted by: Prof. Aggelos Katsaggelos

Prof. Peide (Peter) Ye

Richard J. and Mary Jo Schwartz Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
"Atomic-layer-deposited Atomically Thin InO Transistors for BEOL Logic and Memory Applications"
Hosted by: Prof. Jie Gu

Dr. Riccardo Leonardi

Signal Processing Chair, University of Brescia
"Modelling and Finding Symmetries for Signal and Image Representation"
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasyvoulos Pappas

Prof. Mahdi Hosseini

Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
"Engineering Macroscopic Coherence"
Hosted by: Prof. Selim Shahriar

Prof. Giovanni Finocchio

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Earth Sciences, University of Messina
"Computing with Spintronic Devices and Probabilistic Bits"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. Muhammad Omer Sayin

Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University
"Ferrimagnetic Spintronics and Self-Spin-Orbit Torque"
Hosted by: Prof. Ermin Wei

Dr. Juan Carlos Rojas-Sanchez

CNRS Researcher, Institut Jean Lamour
"Ferrimagnetic Spintronics and Self-Spin-Orbit Torque"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Dr. Arnob Ghosh

Research Scientist, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ohio State University
"Provably-Efficient Model-free Reinforcement Learning Algorithm for Constrained Markov Decision Process with Linear Function Approximation"
Hosted by: Prof. Randall Berry

Prof. Jingsheng Chen

Associate Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore
"Symmetry Breaking by Materials Engineering for Spin-Orbit-Torque Technology"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. Gaurav Bahl

Associate Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Nonreciprocal and robust photonics with light-sound interactions"
Hosted by: Prof. Selim Shahriar

Dr. Tiffany S. Santos

Director of Non-Volatile Memory Materials Research at the Research Division, Western Digital Corporation
"Spins, Bits, and Flips: Essentials for High-Density Magnetic Random Access Memory"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Dean Gregory D. Abowd

Dean of the College of Engineering, Northeastern University
"The Internet of Materials: The next logical step or a paradigm shift?"
Hosted by: Prof. Josiah Hester

Speakers in 2021

Prof. J. Joshua Yang

Professor in Dept. of ECE, University of Southern California
"Memristive Devices for Neuromorphic Computing"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. Guarav Sharma

Professor in Dept. of ECE, University of Rochester
"Large Scale Data Analytics for Airborne Imagery"
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasos Pappas

Prof. Jelena Vuckovic

Professor in Dept. of EE, Stanford Unversity
"Optimized (Quantum) Photonics"
Hosted by: Prof. Koray Aydin

Speakers in 2020

Prof. Yi Ma 

Professor in Residence in Dept. of EE & CS, University of California, Berkeley
"Deep Networks from First Principles "
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasos Pappas

Speakers in 2019

Prof. Kaushik Roy 

Professor in Dept. of ECE, Purdue University
"Re-engineering computing with Neuro-inspired learning: Devices, Circuits & Systems"
Hosted by: Prof. Jie Gu

Prof. Clem Karl 

Professor in Dept. of EE & CS, Boston University
"Learning to make images/machine Learning for Computational Imaging"
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasos Pappas

Prof. Ness Shroff

Professor in Dept. of ECE & CSE, Ohio State University
"A fresh look at an old Problem:  Network Utility Maximization-Convergence, dealy and complexity"
Hosted by: Prof. Randall Berry

Prof. Andrew Kent

Professor Physics in Dept. of Physics, New York University
"A new spin on magnetism with applications in information processing"
Hosted by: Prof. Pedram Khalili

Prof. Guarav Sharma

Professor in Dept. of ECE, University of Rochester
"Large Scale Data Analytics for Airborne Imagery"
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasos Pappas

Prof. Kannan Ramachandran

Professor in Dept. of EECS, University of California, Berkeley
"Codes for the Modern Age: Speeding up Learning and Computing"

Prof. Peter Fisher 

Professor in Dept. of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz
"X-Raying Non-Trivial Spin Textures"

Speakers in 2018

Prof. Dennis Sylvester

Professor in Dept. of EE & CS, University of Michigan
"Ultra-Low Power IC Design 101"
Hosted by: Prof. Jie Gu

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Speakers in 2017

Dr. Yuval Peres

Principal Researcher in Theory Group at Microsoft Research, Redmond
"Towards Optimal Algorithms for Prediction with Expert Advice"
Hosted by: CS Division

Prof. Georgios B. Giannakis

ADC Chair in Wireless Telecommunications & McKnight Presidential Chair in ECE, University of Minnesota
"Adaptive Sketching and Validation for Learning from Big Data"
Hosted by: Prof. Aggelos Katsaggelos

Dr. David Ferrucci

Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Elemental Cognition
"Machines As Thought Partners"
Hosted by: Prof. Kristian Hammond

Prof. Jignesh Patel

Professor in Dept. of CS at University of Wisconsin
"Quickstep: Towards Hardware-software Co-design for Data Processing"
Hosted by: Prof. Larry Birnbaum

Prof. Aaron Stump

Professor in Computer Science at The University of Iowa
"Marvels of Extrinsic Type Theory"
Hosted by: Prof. Robby Findler

Prof. AnHai Doan

Professor in Dept. of CS at University of Wisconsin
"Toward an Integrated Research, System Building, Education, and Outreach Agenda for Data Science"
Hosted by: Prof. Jennie Rogers

Dr. Ashwin Ram

Senior Manager for AI Science for Alexa
"Conversational AI: Voice Based Intelligent Agents"
Hosted by: Prof. Kristian Hammond

Prof. Moses Charikar

Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
"Old Dog, New Tricks: Hashing-based-Estimators for Kernel Density in High Dimensions"
Hosted by: Prof. Aravindan Vijayaraghavan

Prof. Mor Naaman

Associate Professor of Information Science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech
"Patterns of Large-Scale Attention"
Hosted by: ECE Department

Prof. Srini Parthasarathy

Professor, Dept. of CSE, The Ohio State University
"Stochastic Flow Clustering: Consolidation & Renewed Bearing"
Hosted by: Prof. Nikos Hardavellas

Prof. Anastasia Ailamaki

Professor of CS at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
"The Next 700 Transaction Processing Engines"
Hosted by: Prof. Jennie Rogers

Prof. Michael Wellman

Lynn A. Conway Collegiate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at University of Michigan
"Artificial Intelligence Meets Finance: Algorithmic Trading, Financial Stability, and Agent-Based Modeling"
Hosted by: Prof. Larry Birnbaum

Prof. Amy Reibman

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
"Optimization of Networked Distributed Energy Resources"
Hosted by: ECE Department

Prof. Steven Low

Professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, Caltech
"Optimization of Networked Distributed Energy Resources"
Hosted by: Prof. Ermin Wei

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Speakers in 2016

Prof. Aditya Parameswaran

Assistant Professor of CS at University of Illinois (UIUC)
"Three Tools for Human-in-the-Loop Data Analytics"
Hosted by: Prof. Jennie Duggan

Prof. Jonathan Gratch

Director for Virtual Human Research at the University of Southern California's (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies
"Final Frontier? Buildings Machines that Understand & Shape Human Emotion"
Hosted by: Prof. Ken Forbus
Watch Video

Prof. Mike Stonebraker

Chief Technology Officer for Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA
"The 800 Pound Gorilla of Data Science"
Hosted by: Prof. Jennie Duggan

Prof. John Lafferty

Louis Block Professor, CS Dept. at University of Chicago
"Statistical Learning Under Communication and Shape Constraints"
Hosted by: Prof. Douglas Downey

Steve Oberlin

Chief Technology Officer for Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA
"Accelerating Understanding: Machine Learning, Intelligent Applications, and GPUs"
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasos Pappas
Watch Video

Prof. Ali Jadbabaie

Interim Director, Sociotechnical Systems Research Center at MIT
"Collective Phenomena in Complex Networks"
Hosted by: Prof. Ermin Wei

Prof. Hanan Samet

Distinguished University Professor, CS Dept. University of Maryland
"Reading News with Maps by Exploiting Spatial Synonyms"
Hosted by: Prof. Peter Scheuermann and Prof. Goce Trajcevski

Prof. Bob Barmish

Professor, ECE Dept. at University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Quantum Imaging: Is it the Future or Does it Have a Future?"
Hosted by: Prof. Randy Freeman

Prof. Jeffrey H. Shapiro

Julius A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Quantum Imaging: Is it the Future or Does it Have a Future?"
Hosted by: Prof. Selim Shahriar

Prof. Rob A. Rutenbar

Abel Bliss Professor and Head of the CS Dept. for University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Custom Hardware Accelerators for Statistical Inference for Machine Learning”
Hosted by: Prof. Aravindan Vijayaraghavan

Dr. Ravindran Kannan

Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research-India
“Randomized Algorithms in Linear Algebra”
Hosted by: Prof. Aravindan Vijayaraghavan

Dr. Olivier Guyon

Associate Astronomer & Associate Professor of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona
“Imaging and Characterizing Habitable Exoplanets with Ground and Space-based Telescopes”
Hosted by: CIERA/Physics/ECE (Hooman Mohseni and Mel Ulmer)

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Speakers in 2015

Prof. Venkat Guruswami

Professor, Computer Science Dept, Carnegie Mellon University
“Progress in Error-Correction: New Codes for Old Noise Models”
Hosted by: ECE Department

William T. Freeman

Professor, EECS Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“A Big World of Tiny Motions”
Hosted by: Prof. Oliver Cossairt

Prof. Lang Tong

Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor in Engineering, School of ECE, Cornell University
"Energy Management in Distribution Networks under Uncertainty: Pricing, Control, and Learning"

H.V. Jagadish

Bernard A Galler Collegiate Professor, EE & CS Dept, University of Michigan
"Big Data, Data Science, Usability, and Myths"
Hosted by: Prof. Jennie Duggan

Prof. Robert Nowak

McFarland-Bascom Professor in Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Picking Brains with Bandits"
Hosted by: Prof. Ermin Wei

Prof. Rama Chellappa

Minta Martin Professor of Engineering, University of Maryland
"Sparse Representations, Dictionary Learning and Domain Adaptation for Image and Video-based Authentication"
Hosted by: Prof. Oliver Cossairt

Prof. Sadaoki Furui

President, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago; Professor Emeritus, Tokyo Institute of Technology
"Machine Learning Techniques for Automatic Speech Recognition, including Recent Work at TTIC"
Hosted by: Prof. Thrasos Pappas

Prof. Susan Hagness

Robert Philip Dunham Reed Professor, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison
"Low-Cost, Non-Ionizing Medical Imaging and Minimally Invasive Cancer Treatment with Microwaves"
Hosted by: Prof. Koray Aydin

Prof. Vladimir M. Shalaev

Robert and Anne Burnett Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
"Enabling Nanophotonics, Data Storage and Energy Conversion with New Plasmonic Materials"
Hosted by: Prof. Koray Aydin

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