Nano-Design Research Group
Welcome to the Nano-Design Research Group at Harvard!
Our Goal: is to develop future generations of energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable computing systems.
Our Approach: is to combine recent technology advances across the computing stack, spanning nanomaterials, devices, circuits, architectures, and three-dimensional integration techniques.
Key areas of focus:
- emerging nanomaterials for ultra-dense integration of computation and memory - leveraging monolithic 3D integration, chiplet-based systems, and 3D die stacking.
- electronic-photonic integrated circuits - for energy-efficient communication in datacenter-scale distributed computing systems.
- computing’s carbon footprint - including embodied carbon due to physical manufacturing, and operational carbon from day-to-day use.
Our group: is led by seven PhD students in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics, and Computer Science. Their tentative thesis titles (see Join our Team!) should give you an idea of the specific projects we work on.
Work hard: yes.
Play hard: yes.
Interested to learn more?
Follow the links below! We also periodically update this page with exciting news highlights from our group.
- Research
- Join our Team! We are looking for new PhD students to start in Fall 2025.
- Funding
- Mentoring
- Teaching
Selected News Highlights
Selected Research Output
- A huge congratulations to Danielle Grey-Stewart and David Kong for leading our upcoming DATE paper, which was nominated as a Best Paper Award candidate! Our paper: "Quantifying Trade-Offs in Power, Performance, Area, and Total Carbon Footprint of Future Three-Dimensional Integrated Computing Systems" is a huge team effort that spans a wide range of expertise from our group, including major contributions from Danielle Grey-Stewart, David Kong, Mariam Elgamal, Georgios Kyriazidis, and Jalil Morris. 12 papers were nominated out of 1,214 paper submissions. 4 Best Papers will be chosen after out presentation in a Best Paper session at DATE 2025. See you in France!
- Congratulations to Mariam Elgamal for her accepted DATE 2025 extended abstract: “PFASware: Quantifying the Environmental Impact of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Computing Systems”! Mariam is leading our charge on reducing the use PFAS or “forever chemicals” in the design and fabrication of computing systems. We’ll post the link here after the conference.
- Congratulations to Mariam Elgamal for her accepted HPCA paper: “CORDOBA: Carbon-Efficient Optimization Framework for Computing Systems”. Mariam will be presenting at HPCA 2025 in Las Vegas on March 1-5. See you there!
- Congratulations to Georgios Kyriazidis for his accepted abstract to SPIE 2024 Smart Photonic and Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits: “Time-Stepped Optical Frequency Comb Laser Design Leveraging Three-Dimensional Integration of Thin-Film Lithium Niobate and Silicon CMOS”! Georgios presented his work at SPIE in March 2024 in San Francisco, check out the video here! https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3003029
- Congratulations to David Kong for his accepted DAC 2024 poster: “Quantifying the Energy Efficiency Benefits of Monolithic 3D Refreshless Embedded-DRAM”! This is a collaborative effort with Professor Vijay Janapa Reddi’s group, and Pragmatic Semiconductor, toward the development of embedded DRAM leveraging monolithic 3D integration of Si CMOS, Carbon Nanotube FETs, and Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) FETs. David presented his poster at DAC 2024 in San Francisco.
- Congratulations to Mariam Elgamal for her accepted HotEthics workshop paper! Our work “The Environmental Impact of Forever Chemicals in Computing Systems” marks the start of our contributions to reducing the use of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in semiconductor manufacturing, spearheaded by Mariam, together with our collaborators David Brooks and Gu-Yeon Wei at Harvard, and Professor Abdulrahman Mahmoud at MBZUAI.
- Congratulations to Mariam Elgamal for her accepted HotCarbon workshop paper! Our work “Carbon-Efficient Design Optimization for Computing Systems” is a collaboration between David Brooks and Gu-Yeon Wei at Harvard, and our collaborators at Meta led by Carole-Jean Wu. Mariam presented this work at the HotCarbon workshop at Boston University in summer 2023.
Internships
- Congratulations to Georgios Kyriazidis for landing a position at Intel Labs for summer 2024! Georgios is also continuing his work with Intel Labs as a part-time employee in fall 2024.
- Congratulations to David Kong for his internship position at Meta for summer 2024! David’s work at Meta complements his PhD research in the areas of developing three-dimensional integrated computing systems.
- Congratulations to Mariam Elgamal for earning a position at Meta for summer 2022, working with Carole-Jean Wu in the broad area of carbon-aware computing! Mariam also continued her internship with Meta as a part-time employee in fall 2022.
PhD Qualifying Exams
- Fall 2024: Congratulations to John Davis for the Committee on Higher Degrees’ official approval of his PhD program plan in Electrical Engineering and of your PhD qualifying exam committee: Lene Hau, Gu-Yeon Wei, and Kiyoul Yang. John’s tentative thesis title is: “Enabling Very-Large-Scale Integrated (VLSI) Photonic Digital Integrated Circuits”.
- Fall 2024: Congratulations to Jalil Morris for the Committee on Higher Degrees’ official approval of his PhD program plan in Electrical Engineering and of your PhD qualifying exam committee: Vijay Janapa Reddi, Robert Wood, and Gu-Yeon Wei. Jalil’s tentative thesis title is: “Size-, Weight-, and Power (SWaP)-Constrained Systems Enabled by Emerging Technologies”.
- Fall 2024: Congratulations to David Kong for the Committee on Higher Degrees’ official approval of his PhD program plan in Electrical Engineering and of your PhD qualifying exam committee: Donhee Ham, Evelyn Hu, and Gu-Yeon Wei. David’s tentative thesis title is: “Quantifying Trade-Offs in Power, Performance, Area, and Total Carbon Footprint of Three-Dimensional Integrated Computing Systems”.
- Fall 2024: Congratulations to Danielle Grey-Stewart for the Committee on Higher Degrees’ official approval of her PhD program plan in Electrical Engineering and of your PhD qualifying exam committee: Lene Hau, Jennifer Hoffman, and Woodward Yang. Danielle’s tentative thesis title is: “VLSI fabrication and carbon footprint modeling of monolithic three-dimensional electronic-photonic integrated circuits”.
- Summer 2023: Congratulations to Mariam Elgamal for passing her qualifying exam! Thank you to her committee for their guidance in future research directions: David Brooks, Flavio Calmon, and Vijay Janapa Reddi. Mariam’s tentative thesis title is: “Robust Optimization of Carbon-Efficient Computing Systems”.
- Summer 2023: Congratulations to Georgios Kyriazidis for passing his qualifying exam! Thank you to Georgios’ committee for their detailed feedback: Evelyn Hu, Marko Lončar, and Gu-Yeon Wei. Georgios’ tentative thesis title is: “Cross-Domain Co-Optimization of Electronic-Photonic Computing Systems”.
Awards
- Fall 2024: Congratulations to Danielle Grey-Stewart and David Kong for their Best Paper Award nomination at DATE 2025! This is a huge team effort including major contributions from co-authors Mariam Elgamal, Georgios Kyriazidis, and Jalil Morris. Danielle will present our work: “Quantifying Trade-Offs in Power, Performance, Area, and Total Carbon Footprint of Future Three-Dimensional Integrated Computing Systems” at DATE 2025 in Lyon, France!
- Fall 2024: Congratulations to David Kong for receiving Analog Devices Incorporated’s (ADI’s) Outstanding Student Designer Award! Thank you very much to Professor Donhee Ham for the nomination. David will be receiving the award in February 2025 at ISSCC.
Summer 2024: Congratulations to Gage Hills for receiving the Harvard College Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Alpha-Iota Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2024. Professor Gage Hills is the only professor in Electrical Engineering at Harvard ever to be selected for this award (2-4 professors across Harvard per year since 1981).
- Spring 2023: Congratulations to Georgios Kyriazidis for receiving an Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award, for your commitment to “Engineering Sciences 152: Circuits, Devices, and Transduction” in fall 2022!
