Principal Investigator

Dr. Alyosha “Al” Molnar is an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. He received his BS in engineering from Swarthmore college in 1997. After spending a season as a deck-hand on a commercial Tuna fishing boat, Al worked for Conexant systems for 3 years designing RFICs. He was co-responsible engineer developing their first-generation direct-conversion receiver for the GSM cellular standard. That chip, and subsequent variants, have sold in excess of 100 million parts (and are still selling), as well as yielding several highly recognized papers.

When he entered graduate school in 2001, Al worked on an early, ultra-low-power radio transceiver for wireless sensor networks while taking multiple classes in neurobiology. Upon receiving his master’s degree, he changed groups and worked on dissecting the structure and function of neural circuits in the mammalian retina, using a combination of electrophysiological, anatomical and pharmacological techniques, as well as analysis techniques drawn from his Circuits background. In 2009, he joined Cornell as an assistant professor focusing on RF integrated circuits, computational imaging, and neural interfaces.

Contact Al: molnar “at” ece “dot” cornell “dot” edu.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Sunwoo Lee is a postdoctoral researcher in Molnar Group. He received his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University in 2010. Sunwoo obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in 2012 and 2016 respectively. During his Ph.D., he had worked on chemical vapor synthesis of high quality graphene, and signal processing and force-sensing based on graphene nano-electro-mechanical systems (GNEMS) resonators. Sunwoo is currently working on microscale opto-electronically transduced electrodes (MOTEs) for tetherless neural recording.
Sunwoo has received Outstanding TA Award from Mechanical Engineering Department at Columbia University in 2011, Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship 2012 and 2013 (first to win two years in a row), and Pi-Star Award for Young Researcher Presentation, CARBONHAGEN in 2015.
Contact Sunwoo: sl933 “at” cornell “dot” edu
CV
Google Scholar

Postdoctoral Researcher

Alejandro J. Cortese is a postdoctoral researcher in the Molnar Group and McEuen Group. Alejandro received the B.S. degree in Physics with highest honors and the B.S. degree in Mathematics from Duke University, Durham, NC, USA in 2012, the M.S degree and the Ph.D. degree in Physics from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA in 2015 and 2019, respectively. He is currently a Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow working on microscopic optical wireless integrated circuits (OWiCs) and microscopic robotics.
Contact Alejandro: ajc383 “at” cornell “dot” edu

Ph.D. Students

Ed Szoka

Ed graduated from Cornell University in the spring of 2013 with a B.S. and in the fall of 2013 with an M.Eng. with both degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include mixed-signal circuit design for RF and biomedical applications.
***Reigning 2020 Molnar Group Bowling Champion***

Robin Ying

Robin graduated from Cornell University in 2014 with a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include extremely low power radio utilizing both electrical and electro-mechanical systems as well has high-frequency radio utilizing novel circuit design techniques. Outside of his research, Robin enjoys playing volleyball and is volunteer staff with Cornell Asian American Intervarsity (AAIV Christian Fellowship).

Mel White

Mel comes to the Molnar group with a background in signal processing. She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a BA in International Relations from William & Mary. Her primary research interest is in adaptive signal processing and applied math for communication and sensing devices. Outside of research, she enjoys playing banjo, racquetball, learning languages, and hiking with her dog.

Daniel Palmer

Daniel graduated from Swarthmore College in 2016 with the B.S. in Engineering. He researches mixed-signal circuits for ultra-low-power sensing.

Shimin Huang

Shimin graduated from Drexel University with B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering. His research interests include RF integrated circuit design.

Christine Ou

Christine graduated from Cornell University in 2019 with a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests include mixed-signal circuit design for biomedical applications.

Jamie Ye

Jamie graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2019 with a BASc in Engineering Physics. His research interests include RF and mixed-signal circuit design. Outside of research, Jamie enjoys snowboarding, playing piano, and riding motorcycles.

Sanaz Sadeghi

Sanaz graduated from M.Sc. program of Sharif University of Technology on 2017, where she also earned her B.Sc. degree on 2015, both in Electrical engineering. Her research interests include RF, and analog integrated circuit design.

Shahaboddin Ghajari

Shahab graduated from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in 2015 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology in 2017. His research interests include analog and mixed-signal circuit design.

Devesh Khilwani

Devesh graduated in 2019 from Indian Institute Technology Bombay with a B. Tech. and M. Tech. in Electrical Engineering. Research interests are mixed signal design for biological and optoelectronic applications. Hobbies are hiking and swimming.

Damla Dimlioglu

Damla received the B.S. degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering with a minor in Solid-State Physics from METU, Turkey in 2012 and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Semiconductor Devices and Physics from UC Davis, CA in 2015. Her current research interests are RF, mmWave and sub-mmWave integrated circuit design for high data rate wireless communications. Damla has been serving as a reviewer for the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSC-L editorial review board), the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (TCAS-I), the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (T-MTT), the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2018), and as the SSCS YP Student Representative since 2016.

Alex Metzger

Alex graduated from NC State University in 2020 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. His research interests include RF, analog, and mixed signal circuit design. Alex has participated in and supported collegiate recovery communities in the past and is passionate about helping students of all backgrounds.

Undergraduate Researchers

Atsutse Kwami Kludze

TseTse is a sophomore pursuing a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an expected graduation date of May 2021. He is currently working on designing PCBs for an angle-sensitive single photon avalanche detector developed in our lab, as well as some novel circuitry associated with the detector. TseTse is also characterizing the sensor under varying light levels and incident angles, in different modes of operation.

Parker Lawrence Miller

Parker is a senior pursuing a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an expected graduation date of December 2020. His research interests include RF and analog integrated circuit design. Outside of research, Parker enjoys rock climbing, skiing, kayaking and helping run the Cornell Maker Club. & Behavior.