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).

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.

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.

Undergraduate Researchers

Felicia Beiyuan Guo

Felicia is a sophomore 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 junior 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.

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.

Kirsten Scheller

Kirsten is a junior studying Electrical Engineering with an expected graduation date of May 2021. She is working on solution-electrodes interaction under illumination as a part of microscale opto-electronically transduced electrodes (MOTEs) project for tetherless neural recording.

Priya Kattappurath

Priya is a senior pursuing a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with an expected graduation date of May 2020. She is currently designing a radio board, as well as developing a mice tracking system in collaboration with the Sheehan Lab in the Department of Neurobiology & Behavior.