For many important remote sensing applications, including the internet of things, smart sensors, health monitors, and wearable electronics, energy efficiency is of utmost importance. These applications rely on ultra-low-power (ULP) microcontrollers and microprocessors that are already the most widely-used type of processor in production today and are projected to increase their market dominance in the near future. In the ULP embedded systems used by these applications, energy efficiency is the primary factor that determines critical system characteristics such as size, weight, cost, reliability, and lifetime. My research focuses on novel approaches to application-specific energy reduction that push the limits of energy reduction for for ULP systems without reducing performance or functionality.
The Internet of Everything calls for an embedded processor in every object, necessitating billions or trillions of processors. At the same time, the explosion of data generated from these devices, in conjunction with the traditional model of using cloud-based services to process the data, will place tremendous demands on limited wireless spectrum and energy-hungry wireless networks. Smart, ULP edge devices are the only viable option that can meet these demands. The fact that all these devices will be connected demands more research on energy-efficient security measures. In a world where IoT devices have access to all of our data -- personal, health critical, financial, and all the rest -- the attack surface for potential information security leaks becomes larger than ever. The amount of critical information entrusted to ULP devices that often sacrifice security in favor of lower cost, smaller size, and higher energy-efficiency, motivates my research on ensuring information security at ultra-low power and energy levels.
At a high level, my research interests include computer architecture, electronic design automation, embedded systems, and algorithm development, especially focused on energy-efficient computing, computer system security, high-performance computing, stochastic computing, and application-aware design and architecture methodologies.