Wei Lu receives CoE David E. Liddle Research Excellence Award

Prof. Wei Lu received the 2016-2017 David E. Liddle Research Excellence Award from the College of Engineering for his contributions to computing systems with his memristors, neuromorphic circuits, and RRAM.

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.

Along with his research group, Prof. Lu developed Resistive Random-Access Memory (RRAM), a technology with the potential to revolutionize the non-volatile memory market and offer an alternative to Flash memory. The device can be scaled down to atomic dimensions and is extremely reliable and efficient, making it a candidate for the demands of big data and the so-called Internet of Things. In consumer electronics, it has the potential to provide higher storage capacities for mobile phones, faster and more energy-efficient computer servers, lower-power sensing chips for biomedical implants, and a wide range of other applications.

Prof. Lu co-founded Crossbar, Inc. in 2010 to bring RRAM to the marketplace. He currently serves as Chief Scientist for the company, which currently employs more than 60 employees and has several commercial memory products in the market.

He also directs a $6.9M DARPA project to expand RRAM’s applications to computing hardware. His goal is a 10,000x improvement in power efficiency and a 1000x improvement in speed for computing tasks such as image and video processing.

Prof. Lu is co-Editor-in-Chief of Nanoscale, and a member of the editorial board for Micro and Nanosystems. He has authored more than 100 journal publications, and is author of 11 U.S. patents. The number of total citations on his publications approaches 14,000. He is a member of the Internal Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, Emerging Research Devices Working Group.

At Michigan, Prof. Lu is director of the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility and serves on the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Executive Committee. He has taught courses ranging from Quantum Mechanics, Microelectronics Processing Technology, and undergraduate and graduate level semiconductor device courses. He has graduated 12 Ph.D. students, and directs a research group of approx. 15 doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers.

Prof. Lu received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Tsinghua University, a Ph.D. degree from Rice University, and served as a postdoctoral research in chemistry at Harvard University. He joined the University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2005.

More Info: Wei Lu