Communicating, Processing, and Computing: Systems That Listen AND Understand
Abstract:
Over the past decade, RF and microwave sensing and communications have become increasingly intertwined, a convergence that is accelerating as new computing paradigms reshape how information is acquired, processed, and acted upon. Today, sensing, communication, and computing are no longer distinct system layers: computing provides the tools and infrastructure that enable modern communication, while communication itself has become a fundamental operation within many computing systems.
Technologies such as software-defined radios and edge computing further blur these boundaries by embedding intelligence directly into the coordination and operation of RF channels. In this talk, I examine both the enabling devices, components, and circuits that make this fusion possible, as well as emerging computing paradigms that fundamentally alter how RF systems interact with data. I will highlight recent advances in tunable on-chip RF and microwave platforms and discuss the emergence of microwave neural networks, which leverage these capabilities to perform signal processing and inference directly in hardware. Together, these examples point toward a new class of RF and millimeter-wave systems that move beyond passively listening to their environment toward actively understanding it, while also revealing the practical limits and open challenges of intelligence at the RF front end.
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- Northeastern University
- 815 Columbus Ave
- Boston, Massachusetts
- United States 02120
- Building: EXP
- Room Number: Conf room EXP 610
- Starts 14 January 2026 05:00 AM UTC
- Ends 26 January 2026 11:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Alyssa of Cornell University
Communicating, Processing, and Computing: Systems That Listen AND Understand
Biography:
Alyssa Apsel received the B.S. from Swarthmore College in 1995 and the Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, in 2002. She joined Cornell University in 2002, where she is currently Director of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the IBM Professor of Engineering. Her current research is on the leading edge of ultra-low power and flexible RF interfaces for IoT. Her group has pioneered the use of coupled oscillators for network synchronization of mesh networks and a variety of techniques for flexible RF systems. She has authored or coauthored over 100 refereed publications including one book in related fields of RF mixed signal circuit design, ultra-low power radio, interconnect design and planning, photonic integration, and process invariant circuit design techniques resulting in ten patents. She is also a co-founder of several startups including EchoICs. She has received a number of best paper awards and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in addition to being selected by Technology Review Magazine as one of the Top Young Innovators in 2004. More recently Professor Apsel served as a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE CAS from 2018-2019 and was named an IEEE Fellow
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