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.

Research Associate

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

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***

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 EEE with a minor in Solid-State Physics from METU, Turkey in 2012 and the M.S. degree in EE with a minor in Semiconductor Devices from UC Davis, CA in 2015. Her research interests are RF, mmWave, and sub-mmWave IC design for high data rate wireless communications. She serves as a reviewer for IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I, and IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. Damla is a member of the MTT-14 Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits Committee and IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Technical Program Review Committee.

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.

M.Eng. Researchers

Thomas Sand

Thomas graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2020. He previously worked in the lab at Eridan Communications testing polar transmitters. His interests include hockey and Linux.

Hamilton Lee

Hamilton is a Master’s student studying Electrical and Computer Engineering with an expected graduation date in May 2022. His research interests include analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit design. Outside of research, Hamilton enjoys drawing, hiking, and watching movies.