Circuits and systems (including computer-aided design)

Dr. James Barby is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His research interests include mixed-mode and behavioural models of devices, complex analog or mixed-mode circuits, simulation of switched networks for communications and power electronics, analysis methods and models for digital, analog and mixed-signal VLSI systems, and optimal fit numerical approximations of transistor models.

In addition to his research work, Dr. Barby has written journal papers for IEEE and annual conference papers for the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

• mixed-mode and behavioural models of devices
• complex analog or mixed-mode circuits
• simulation of switched networks
• analog and mixed-signal VLSI systems
• optimal fit numerical approximations of transistor
• circuits Design & VLSI

Dr. Slim Boumaiza is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His research is focused on defining, conceptualizing, designing, and realizing high-performing microwave and millimeter wave circuits and systems for wireless communications (with applications in 4G, 5G and the Internet of Things). He directs the Emerging Radio System Research Group (EmRG), which conducts multidisciplinary research encompassing the semiconductor device, circuit, and system levels of radio hardware. Under his supervision, researchers investigate the areas of transistor modelling and characterization (at the semiconductor device level), ultra wideband and highly efficient power amplifiers (at the circuit level) and low power linearization schemes (at the system level).

He is passionately involved in communicating knowledge of radio systems through teaching, supervision, and youth outreach. He has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses covering basics of electrical engineering and advanced topics in microwave engineering. Over 100 highly qualified personnel (undergraduate, master's, and PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, and other research staff) have worked under his supervision to date. Many have gone on to secure highly sought-after positions in industry. Dr. Boumaiza and his team actively participate in university-led efforts to engage youth and minorities and promote their interest in engineering.

Vincent Gaudet is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His research interests focus on high-speed and energy-efficient microelectronic circuits applied to digital communication systems and signal processing. He is particularly interested in stochastic computing systems and multiple-valued logic. He has worked on low-density parity-check (LDPC) and turbo decoders, multiple-access channels, implantable neural recording systems, and integrated lab-on-chip instrumentation circuitry.

Dr. Gaudet is currently a Senior Member of the IEEE, and holds many editorial positions. In 2009, he received the Petro Canada Young Innovator Award to recognize and support his work of outstanding young faculty-based research.

Catherine H. Gebotys is an Adjunct Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. 

Her research interests include embedded systems security, side channel analysis for secure devices, security countermeasures for cryptographic algorithms, and countermeasures for hardware hacking – side channel, fault injection, microprobing and reverse engineering. 

Dr. Gebotys is the sole inventor of several patents and has also received numerous awards, including the CITO Champions of Innovation Award. In addition, she has collaborated with several companies including DRDC, XtremeEDA, Blackberry, Motorola, ViXS, and COMDEV. 

Dr. Gebotys has published a number of research papers in the areas of side channel analysis, embedded security, applied optimization for high-level hardware and software synthesis. She is the author of Security in Embedded Devices, as well as the co-author of Optimal VLSI Architectural Synthesis: area, performance and testability.

• Embedded security
• Security countermeasures
• Side channel analysis
• Fault injection analysis
• Photon emissions analysis

Dr. Karim S. Karim is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He has secured more than $15M in research grant funding, trained over 40 PhD and MASc students, and has co-authored 250+ publications and 50+ patents. 

He is a founder and Chief Technology Officer of KA Imaging, a University of Waterloo spinoff company that makes innovative X-ray detectors and systems for medical, veterinary, scientific and industrial markets. Dr. Karim has developed novel imaging devices and systems since 1998, and has both supported and founded multiple startups over the past two decades. One of his “color” X-ray innovations is now starting to replace black and white medical X-ray globally, while another is used in ultrasonic fingerprint sensors in mobile phones and tablets.

• Spectral X-ray Imaging
• Phase Contrast X-ray Imaging
• Medical Imaging
• Large area electronics
• Semiconductor Devices and Fabrication

Dr. Peter Levine is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His research group develops complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) that translate the chemical world of biology to the digital world. By combining standard CMOS analog/mixed-signal ICs with novel structures, materials, or devices, he and his team are developing advanced CMOS imagers and biosensors for a wide range of life-science and biosensing applications.

• CMOS analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs)
• CMOS electrochemical biosensors
• CMOS imagers (visible, IR, and X-ray)

Dr. John R. Long is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.  He received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary in 1984, and a M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Electronics from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. He was the Chair of the Electronics Research Laboratory at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. 

His research interests include high speed wireline and high frequency, low power and mobile transceiver circuits for integrated wireless communications systems.

• high speed wireline and high frequency
• low power and mobile transceiver circuits for integrated wireless communications systems
• advanced manufacturing

Dr. David Nairn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His research is mainly in the field of electronic circuits, including analog and mixed signal circuit design, with an emphasis on analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and digital-to-analog converters (DACs).

• Analog and Mixed Signal Circuit Design
• Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)
• Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs)
• Circuit Design & VLSI

Dr. Chrystopher Nehaniv is a full professor in the Departments of Systems Design Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, a position he has held since August 2018. A mathematician, computer scientist, and complex adaptive systems researcher, Dr. Nehaniv is also affiliated with the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, where he previously served as Director of the Centre for Computer Science & Informatics Research. There, he led research in the Algorithms, Adaptive Systems, and Wolfson Royal Society Biocomputation Research Groups as a Professor of Mathematical and Evolutionary Computer Sciences.

Before moving to Canada, Dr. Nehaniv was a full professor at the University of Aizu in Japan and held visiting professorships in Mathematics at Ibaraki National University, Japan, and the Institute for Mathematics & Informatics at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. He was also a post-doctoral research fellow and lecturer in Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Nehaniv is the founder of the Waterloo Algebraic Intelligence & Computation Laboratory (WAICL) and, alongside Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, co-founded the University of Waterloo's Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory (SIRRL). He is a member of the Waterloo AI Institute and serves on the steering committee of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI).

An active contributor to the academic community, Dr. Nehaniv is an Associate Editor for BioSystems, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, Interaction Studies, and Complexity. He previously served as Topic Editor-in-Chief for The International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems in the areas of AI Robotics and Human-Machine/Robot Interaction. He has been involved with the IEEE Task Force for Artificial Life and Complex Adaptive Systems since its inception in 2003, serving as Chair from 2012 to 2018 and as Vice Chair since 2018. He is also a member of the IEEE Cognitive and Developmental Systems Technical Committee (2019-present) of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.

Dr. Ajoy Opal is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His current research interests include circuit and filter theory, numerical algorithms for analysis and design of analog and switched circuits, and mixed analog-digital circuits.

In addition to his research work, Dr. Opal has also written a book and published or presented papers in various journals and conferences. In 2010, he co-authored the book, Computer Methods for Analysis of Mixed-Mode Switching Circuits with Fei Yuan.

• Electrical Circuit Theory
• Circuit Simulation
• Analog Filter Design
• Circuits Design & VLSI
• Circuit theory and filter theory
• Numerical algorithms for analysis of analog and switched circuits

Dr. Omar Ramahi is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. 

His research interests include radiating systems, renewable energy technology, biomedical applications of electromagnetic waves and fields, electromagnetic compatibility and interference, metamaterials and its engineering applications, and material measurements. In addition to his research, he co-founded Applied Electromagnetic Technology, LLC., and Wave Intelligence Inc.

Dr. Ramahi has received numerous awards as a result of his extensive research and teaching capabilities. He was recognized for his graduate research work with the 2010 University of Waterloo Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision. Additionally, he was awarded the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Technical Achievement Award in 2012. Dr. Ramahi is an elected IEEE Fellow.

He has written over 450 journal and conference papers on electromagnetic phenomena and computational techniques. EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook is one of the notable books that Dr. Ramahi co-authored.

Derek Wright is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and currently serving as the Director of Mechatronics Engineering. He also serves as the faculty advisor for the Waterloo Aerial Robotics Group. His research is in Digital ICs (especially spiking neural networks), Medical Imaging Physics, and Multidomain Modeling and Simulation. Dr. Wright is interested in productization and commercialization efforts related to this research and to student initiatives.

• Neuromorphic hardware
• VLSI
• Multidomain modeling and simulation

Dr. George Shaker is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Waterloo. He also oversees wireless activities in the sensors and devices lab at the UW-Schlegel Research Institute for Aging. Previously, he was with Research in Motion (BlackBerry). He was also with Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been the Principal Scientist and Head of Research at Spark Technology Labs (STL), since its founding in 2011. In 2017, George was selected by the office of the president of NSERC among a group of ten Canadian professors to discuss Canadian research advancement in the Internet of Things (IoT) area at the special NSERC-NRC-MOST meeting in Ottawa. In addition, prof. Shaker serves on the organizational committee of the French-Canadian Bioengineering School.

With more than fifteen years of industrial experience in technology, and about eight years as an adjunct faculty member leading projects related to the application of wireless sensor systems for healthcare, automotives, and unmanned aerial vehicles, Prof. Shaker has many design contributions in commercial products available from startups and established companies alike. A sample list includes: COM DEV \, Blackberry, Google, Spark Tech Labs, Bionym, Lyngsoe Systems, ON Semiconductors, Ecobee, Medella Health, NERV Technologies, Novella, Thalmic Labs (North), General Dynamics Land Systems, and Omron Technologies.

George has received multiple recognitions and awards, including the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship (sole winner in the area of Electromagnetics across Canada, 2007-10, first UW student to receive the scholarship in EM), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2007, 2010), the European School of Antennas Grant at IMST-GmbH (2007), the IEEE AP-S Best Paper Award (2009, 3, first @ UW), the IEEE AP-S Honorable Mention Paper Award (Twice, 2008, 2011), the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Graduate Research Award (2008/2009, first @ UW), NSERC CGS-FSS (2009/2010, sole winner from UW Engineering), the IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship (2009, first UW student to receive the fellowship), and the Electronic Components and Technology Best of Session Paper Award (2010). Two paper he co-authored in IEEE Sensors were among the top 25 downloaded papers on IEEEXplore for several consecutive months (2012/2017). He was the supervisor of the team winning the third best design at IEEE APS 2016, APS 2017 HM paper award, 2018 CVS Best Paper, and two IEEE APS Research Awards.