Brain-inspired hardware research earns Illinois Ph.D. student top thesis Honor

Berre Vize, a second-year Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has received the Best M.S. Thesis Award from Middle East Technical University’s (METU) Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences for research that repurposes capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) technology to mimic the human brain.

Her thesis, completed under Prof. Dr. Barış Bayram, developed artificial neuron hardware from MEMS transducers, an early step toward computers that process information as efficiently as biological neurons do.

Vize received her bachelor's and master's degrees from METU. She started her research journey during her undergraduate years. When it came time for her thesis, she took her work with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) regarding ultrasound applications and applied it to a new area: Neuromorphic computing.

“It's mainly inspired by our biological brains and the way our neurons operate. As you know, our brains work in a very energy efficient way," Vize said. "Rather than relying on analog electronics for continuous signal processing or digital electronics for binary bit-based signal processing, neuromorphic electronics can process and store information relying on energy-efficient spike-based signal processing inspired by our neurons.”

Their work is still in very early stages. “We have developed a proof of concept “MEMS neuristor” device with a PCT patent filing, and we believe, eventually, when these novel electronic devices become more industrially applicable, these alternative computing technologies will become more advantageous rather than relying on conventional computing technologies.”

For this work, “Development of MEMS Neuristors via Capacitive Micromachined Transducer Technology,” Vize was recognized with the university's “Best M.S. Thesis Award for Contributions to Technological Development.” She said it is a big deal and “an important technological award” for their campus for graduate students.

Currently, Vize is a Ph.D. student, advised by Illinois Grainger Engineering electrical and computer engineering professor Can Bayram. Together, they are working on ultra-wide-bandgap semiconductors, “specifically, diamond-based semiconductor devices for high power, high frequency applications.”

Vize said Illinois has a strong doctoral program as well as exceptional research facilities and faculty support. “Professor Bayram always supports us in becoming exceptional scientists and researchers, in both our research and philosophy of life development,” Vize said. “It has been a really uniquely crafted experience for me to be here and work with great people of vision and wisdom.”

From ultrasound transducers to artificial neurons, and now to diamond semiconductors, Vize’s research has followed the same thread: looking at a technology and asking what else it could do. It’s the kind of curiosity she encourages in students just starting out, even when experiments don’t go as planned. “Sometimes things don’t work as expected,” she said, “but eventually everything can lead to a new problem and a new solution.”

At Illinois, she’s carrying that mindset into her next chapter, working on advanced electronic and semiconductor technologies that she hopes will make meaningful contributions to future applications.

Illinois Grainger Engineering Affiliations Can Bayram is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a resident faculty member in the Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. He holds an Intel Alumni Endowed Faculty Scholar appointment.