Wei Lu elected IEEE Fellow for contributions to neuromorphic systems

Professor Wei Lu has been elected IEEE Fellow, Class of 2018, “for contributions to development of neuromorphic systems.”

Prof. Lu is an internationally recognized leader in the development of memristors for memory and logic applications. He has also developed nanowire transistors suitable for flexible electronics and optoelectornics, and conducts research into other emerging electrical devices.

Prof. Lu maintains a large and highly-effective research group of eleven doctoral students and three postdoctoral fellows, and has graduated twelve Ph.D. students.

After developing a new resistive random-access memory (RRAM) device with his research group, Lu co-founded Crossbar, Inc. in 2010. Crossbar is a semiconductor company based in Silicon Valley that specializes in RRAM technologies; Lu currently serves as Chief Scientist. The company is currently collaborating with Mobiveil Inc to use resistive random access memory in solid state drives. It has been speculated that RRAM will replace Flash – thanks in large part to Lu’s contributions to the technology.

In the same year that Crossbar was founded, Lu was the first to demonstrate that solid-state two-terminal memristor devices can implement biological learning rules and lead to efficient, biologically-inspired neuromorphic computing systems. This work attracted international attention, and led to the foundation of several major government programs that aim to build artificial neural networks based on these emerging devices, including a current $6.9M DARPA program led by Lu.

More recent research has demonstrated efficient image analysis using his novel circuits, as well as methods to perform general, data-intensive computing based on this new hardware system. This work is applicable to fields such as pervasive sensing, Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles and other Big Data tasks, and has attracted interest from conventional semiconductor companies, oil and gas companies, and defense contractors.

Lu has published more than 100 journal and conference papers, and given more than 70 invited presentations and seminars at a variety of international professional and industrial conferences. He is also co-editor of Semiconductor Nanowires, published in 2014. His research is highly cited, giving him an h-factor of 54 according to Google Scholar.

He has twelve U.S patents, and his company has more than 100 patents based on Lu’s innovative technology.

Prof. Lu is co-Editor-in-Chief of Nanoscale, and a member of the Internal Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), Emerging Research Device Working Group. He is also Director of the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility, and serves on the ECE Executive Committee.

He has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award, College of Engineering Rexford E. Hall Innovation Excellence, and David E. Liddle Research Excellence Awards, and the EECS Outstanding Achievement Award

Prof. Lu received his Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University, and was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology before joining Michigan as a faculty member in 2005.

About IEEE Fellows:

IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. The IEEE Grade of Fellow is one of the most prestigious honors of the IEEE, and is bestowed upon a very limited number of Senior Members who have contributed importantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology bringing significant value to our society. The number of IEEE Fellows elevated in a year is no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total IEEE voting membership.

There are more than 430,000 IEEE members in more than 160 countries. The IEEE publishes a third of the world’s technical literature in electrical engineering, computer science and electronics and is a leading developer of international standards that underpin many of today’s telecommunications, information technology and power generation products and services.

Read more about Wei Lu