![\"\"](\"\/eng\/files\/2023\/11\/eceNEWS.23.11.CHIPS_.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This is our third and final article in the \u201cECE CHIPs In\u201d series, highlighting BU ECE\u2019s contributions to research and education under the umbrella of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, and our faculty\u2019s collective investment in the national effort to build a robust and innovative semiconductor industry.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n by A.J. Kleber<\/em><\/p>\n Professor Yazicigil specializes in low-power, custom micro-scale integrated circuit design, purpose-built for a growing variety of applications from communications to synthetic biology. She has been instrumental in bringing the revolutionary, code-agnostic decoder algorithm GRAND\u2013often termed \u201cthe universal decoder\u201d–to hardware realization, working closely with local and overseas collaborators to develop <\/span>a series of custom chips <\/span><\/a>utilizing and improving GRAND\u2019s method of \u201cintelligent noise guessing\u201d to streamline, speed up, and secure future wireless communications.<\/span><\/p>\n Expanding the focus on efficient wireless communications beyond the looming concern of capacity crunch, Professor Yazicigil has been particularly noted for her increasing body of collaborative work in interdisciplinary, biomedical-centric projects. Her miniscule, resource-light designs are ideal for medical applications, as exemplified by her ongoing collaboration with researchers from MIT on the development of a tiny <\/span>ingestible capsule<\/span><\/a> or \u201csmart pill\u201d for monitoring the human gastrointestinal tract in real time. Their prototypical device, which uses her customized, energy-efficient sensor readout circuit, could have a positive impact on the lives of millions of patients suffering from gut ailments around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n Professor Yazicigil\u2019s evident facility with forming productive, interdisciplinary collaborative relationships is not limited to colleagues at other institutions, of course. She has partnered several times with members of BU\u2019s Biomedical Engineering department and with fellow BU ECE Professor Douglas Densmore on projects such as an <\/span>ambitious effort<\/span><\/a> to advance biomanufacturing, enabling the conversion of food waste and manure into useful products which are currently derived from fossil fuels. Adapting her highly miniaturized, low-power sensor technology for integrated use in bioreactors is a key component of the BioMADE consortium\u2019s approach. The duo have also recently been awarded a $315K grant from the <\/span>Semiconductor Research Corporation<\/span><\/a> (SRC) to develop hybrid microfluidic-CMOS biosensors specifically to monitor wastewater for harmful byproducts of the semiconductor industry itself.<\/span><\/p>\n The community-oriented approach Professor Yazicigil brings to her work encompasses her students as well as her peers. Since she joined BU ECE in 2018, student researchers in her WISE-Circuits Lab have taken an active and vital role in her projects, often first-authoring key journal and conference articles and performing initial demonstrations of key advances. Some of her Ph.D. advisees have won awards as a result, such as Arslan Riaz\u2019s Best Demo Award and Best Research Demo Award at COMSNETS 2023 and 2022, respectively, for custom GRAND algorithm chip demonstrations, and Qijun (Mandy) Liu\u2019s <\/span>2023 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Predoctoral Achievement Award<\/span><\/a>. Liu, who is poised to become the lab\u2019s first graduate after defending her dissertation in December, has recently been selected for an IEEE ISSCC 2023 Student Research Preview Best Poster Award, to be presented at ISSCC 2024 in February.<\/span><\/p>\n With all this vital research already in progress, Processor Yazicigil shows no signs of slowing down, serving as Boston University\u2019s institutional lead in the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub\u2019s 5G\/6G project under the co-leadership of longtime collaborator and GRAND algorithm co-creator Professor Muriel M\u00e9dard of MIT and other top-tier researchers. The NEMC is one of eight <\/span>Microelectronics Commons Regional Innovation Hubs<\/span><\/a> established by the DoD with a $238M CHIPS Act award, its largest to date, and with $2B in anticipated funding over the next four fiscal years. Professor Yazicigil\u2019s group is interested in continuing to push the boundaries with the GRAND family of algorithms, as realized in innovative chip designs that can improve on all key metrics. Professor Yazicigil has also received a recent $270K award from the SRC and the <\/span>Texas Analog Center of Excellence<\/span><\/a> (TxACE) to work on physical-layer security measures for wireless communications.<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to her outstanding research and mentorship, Professor Rabia Yazicigil has a stellar track record when it comes to serving her scholarly community; an IEEE Senior Member, she was elected to the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society AdCom as a 2024 Member-at-Large, in addition to serving as its representative on the IEEE Council on RFID (CRFID) since 2022. She is the recipient of the 2021 BU ECE Outstanding Faculty Service Award, and has recently contributed to the \u201cHardware-Limited Task-Based Quantization in Systems\u201d chapter in <\/span>Women in Telecommunications<\/span><\/i>, part of Springer Nature\u2019s Women in Engineering and Science book series, in addition to invited talks and event organization at conferences such as ISSCC 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many ways, Professor Rabia Yazicigil is the very image of the kind of scientist and engineer called for by the CHIPS Act: productive, inventive, application-focused, collaborative- and service-minded, and an active mentor cultivating similar values and capabilities in a younger generation of innovators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18241,"featured_media":148298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,1372,325,318,977,978,240,907,1048],"tags":[1100,1101,1102,981,636,544,727],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148274"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148311,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148274\/revisions\/148311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"\/eng\/files\/2024\/01\/eceNEWS.24.01.16.YazicigilSpotlight4.jpg\")
In a few short years, Professor Rabia Yazicigil<\/a> has made a name for herself in microelectronics research as a collaborative, flexible innovator motivated to cross disciplinary lines in pursuit of cutting-edge technical advances with broad applications to the betterment of society. In many ways, she is the very image of the kind of scientist and engineer called for by the CHIPS Act: productive, inventive, application-focused, collaborative- and service-minded, and an active mentor cultivating similar values and capabilities in a younger generation of innovators.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"\/eng\/files\/2024\/01\/eceNEWS.24.01.16.YazicigilSpotlight3.jpg\")
![\"Professor](\"\/eng\/files\/2024\/01\/eceNEWS.24.01.16.YazicigilSpotlight2-636x495.jpg\")