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

Administrative Assistant

Barbara “Barb” Walpole is an administrative assistant in Molnar Group. She lives in Groton with her husband, John, and has has two children: Ellen, who is a seventh grade English teacher in Rochester, and Quin, who is also employed at Cornell. Barb enjoys reading, going to the movies, walking, family time and traveling.
Contact Barb: bww49 “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.

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).

Zach Boynton

Zach graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. His research interests are RF, analog, and mixed-signal circuit design.

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.

Master of Engineering Researchers

Undergraduate Researchers

Paige Trexel

Paige is pursuing her B.S. in ECE at Cornell with an expected graduation date of May 2019. She has worked on opto-electrical . characterization of micro-scale opto-electrically transduced electrodes (MOTEs), and is currently working on electro-chemical modeling of electrode-solution interfaces.

Pumiao (Nancy) Yan

Pumiao is a senior undergraduate student at cornell university pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research project is Micro-scale RF-powered Magnetic Neural Stimulator.

Aasta Parin Gandhi

Aasta is a junior in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Cornell. Her research interests include the brain-computer interface, and she is currently working on the micro-scale opto-electronically transduced electrode (MOTE) project funded by National Institute of Health (NIH).

Frances (Frannie) Koback

Frannie is pursuing a B.S. in ECE at Cornell with an expected graduation date of May 2019. Her research interests lie in the intersection of biology and electrical engineering, and currently working on electro-chemical modeling of electrode-solution interface. Outside the Molnar Lab, she is also a computer science course consultant and a part-time intern at Bionic Eye Technologies.

Logan Hernandez Horowitz

Logan Horowitz is a junior ECE at Cornell University with an expected graduation date of May 2019. His research interests include RF and analog circuit design. He is currently designing circuit blocks in the Programmable Duplexing Radios division of the group.

Sanush Nukshan Kehelella

Sanush is a junior pursuing a B.S in ECE at Cornell University with an expected graduation date of May 2019. His interests include RF integrated circuit design and mixed-signal circuit design. Outside of the Molnar Lab, he is a member of the Cornell Cup Robotics Team and the VLSI Information Processing Group.

Emily P. Kuck

Emily is a sophomore in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Cornell University with an expected graduation date of May 2020. She is currently characterizing opto-electrical interaction of platinum electrodes in saline solution to study its implication on noise of the micro-scale opto-electrically transduced electrodes (MOTEs).

Michael Rivera

Michael is a sophomore pursuing a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an expected graduation date of May 2020. He is currently working on designing PCBs for the programmable duplexing radio project. Outside of the Molnar Group, Michael is a member of Cornell Cup Robotics and also enjoys playing volleyball.

TseTse Kwami Kludze

TseTse is a freshman 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.

Felicia Beiyuan Guo

Felicia is a freshman pursuing a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an expected graduation date of May 2021. She is currently working on designs for low noise loads on active mixers.

Grant Randall Headrick

Grant is a sophomore pursuing a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an expected graduation date of May 2020. His interests include device physics and he is currently designing a low noise load for active mixers. Outside of the Molnar Group, Grant is a member of Cornell Hyperloop Project Team and also enjoys playing soccer.