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SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Abu Sebastian was born in Kerala, India. He received a B. E. (Hons.) degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, India and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering (minor in Mathematics) from Iowa State University. Since 2006, he is a Research Staff Member at IBM Research - Zurich in Rüschlikon, Switzerland. He was a contributor to several key projects in the space of storage and memory technologies and currently manages the research effort on in-memory computing at IBM Research - Zurich. He is the author/co-author of over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals/conference proceedings and holds over 70 US patents.

Dr. Sebastian is a co-recipient of the 2009 IEEE Control Systems Technology Award and the 2009 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award. In 2013 he received the IFAC Mechatronic Systems Young Researcher Award for his contributions to the field of mico-/nanoscale mechatronic systems. In 2015 he was awarded the European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant and in 2020, he was awarded an ERC Proof-of-concept grant. He is an IBM Master Inventor since 2016. He was named Principal and Distinguished Research Staff Member in 2018 and 2020, respectively. In 2019 he received the Ovshinsky Lectureship Award for his contributions to "Phase-change materials for cognitive computing".  He has served on the technical program committees of several conferences including IEDM, AICAS, NVMTS and E\PCOS. He was selected as the Distinguished Lecturer in IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation for 2022-2023.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

BOOK:

• S. Spiga, A. Sebastian, D. Querlioz, B. Rajendran, "Memristive devices for brain-inspired computing", Elsevier, 2020

IN-MEMORY COMPUTING:

• J. Feldmann, N. Youngblood, M. Karpov, H. Gehring, M. Stappers, M. Le Gallo, X. Fu, A. Lukashchuk, A. S. Raja, J. Liu, C. D. Wright, A. Sebastian*, T. J. Kippenberg*, W. H. P. Pernice*, H. Bhaskaran*, "Parallel convolution processing using an integrated photonic tensor core", Nature, 2021
• A. Sebastian*, M. Le Gallo, R. Khaddam-Aljameh, E. Eleftheriou, "Memory devices and applications for in-memory computing", Nature Nanotechnology, 2020
• V. Joshi, M. Le Gallo*, S. Haefeli, I. Boybat, S. R. Nandakumar, C. Piveteau, M. Dazzi, B. Rajendran, A. Sebastian*, E. Eleftheriou, "Accurate deep neural network inference using computational phase-change memory", Nature Communications, 2020
• C. Rios, N. Youngblood, Z. Cheng, M. Le Gallo, W. H. P. Pernice, C. D. Wright, A. Sebastian*, H. Bhaskaran*, "In-memory computing on a photonic platform", Science Advances, 2019
• I. Giannopoulos*, A. Sebastian*, M. Le Gallo, V. P. Jonnalagadda, M. Sousa, M. N. Boon, E. Eleftheriou, "8-bit precision in-memory multiplication with projected phase-change memory", Proc. IEDM, 2018 (Highlight paper)
• Le Gallo*, A. Sebastian*, R. Mathis, M. Manica, H. Giefers, T. Tuma, C. Bekas, A. Curioni, E. Eleftheriou, “Mixed-precision in-memory computing”, Nature Electronics, 2018
• Sebastian*, T. Tuma, N. Papandreou, M. Le Gallo, L. Kull, T. Parnell, E. Eleftheriou, “Temporal correlation detection using computational phase-change memory”, Nature Communications, 2017
• Hosseini, A. Sebastian, N. Papandreou, C. D. Wright, H. Bhaskaran, “Accumulation-based computing using phase change memories with FET access devices”, IEEE Electron Device Letters, 2015

BRAIN-INSPIRED COMPUTING/AI:

• G. Karunaratne, M. Schmuck, M. Le Gallo, G. Cherubini, L. Benini, A. Sebastian*, A. Rahimi*, "Robust high-dimensional memory-augmented neural networks", Nature Communications, 12, 2468, 2021
• G. Karunaratne, M. Le Gallo, G. Cherubini, L. Benini, A. Rahimi*, A. Sebastian*, "In-memory hyperdimensional computing", Nature Electronics, 2020
• B. Rajendran, A. Sebastian, M. Schmuker, N. Srinivasa, E. Eleftheriou, "Low-power neuromorphic hardware for signal processing applications: A review of architectural and system-level design approaches", IEEE Signal Proc. Magazine, 2019
• A. Sebastian*, M. Le Gallo, G. W. Burr, S. Kim, M. BrightSky, E. Eleftheriou, "Tutorial: Brian-inspired computing using phase-change memory devices", J. Appl. Phys., vol. 124(11), 111101, 2018
• T. Moraitis*, A. Sebastian* and E. Eleftheriou, "Short-term plasticity in neuromorphic learning", IEEE Trans. on Nanotech., vol. 12(3), 45-53, 2018
• Boybat*, M. Le Gallo, S. R. Nandakumar, T. Moraitis, T. Parnell, T. Tuma, B. Rajendran, Y. Leblebici, A. Sebastian*, E. Eleftheriou, “Neuromorphic computing with multi-memristive synapses”, Nature Communications, 2018
• Gong, T. Ide, S. Kim, I. Boybat, A. Sebastian, V. Narayanan, T. Ando*, “Signal and noise extraction from analog memory elements for neuromorphic computing”, Nature Communications, 2018
• G. W. Burr, R. M. Shelby, A. Sebastian et al., “Neuromorphic computing using non-volatile memory”, Advances in Physics X, vol. 2(1), pp. 89-124, 2017
• Tuma, A. Pantazi, M. Le Gallo, A. Sebastian, E. Eleftheriou, “Stochastic phase-change neurons”, Nature Nanotechnology, 2016 (Cover)

EXPLORATORY MEMORY:

• M. Le Gallo and A. Sebastian, "An overview of phase-change memory device physics", J. Phys. D. Appl. Phys., 2020
• Salinga*, B. Kersting, I. Ronneberger, V. P. Jonnalagadda, X. T. Vu, M. Le Gallo, I. Giannopoulos, O. Cojocaru-Miredin, R. Mazzarello, A. Sebastian*, “Monatomic phase change memory”, Nature Materials, 2018 (Cover)
• Le Gallo, D. Krebs, F. Zipolli, M. Salinga, A. Sebastian, “Collective structural relaxation in phase-change memory devices”, Adv. Electronic Materials, 2018
• W. Burr, M. J. Brightsky, A. Sebastian et al., “Recent progress in phase-change memory technology”, IEEE Journal on emerging and selected topics in circuits and systems, 2016
• Le Gallo, A. Athmanathan, D. Krebs, A. Sebastian, “Evidence for thermally assisted threshold switching behavior in nanoscale phase-change memory cells”, Journal of Applied Physics, 119, 025704, 2016
• Le Gallo, M. Kaes, A. Sebastian, D. Krebs, “Subthreshold electrical transport in amorphous phase change materials”, New Journal of Physics., 2015
• C. A. Santini*, A. Sebastian*, C. Marchiori, V. P. Jonnalagadda,  L. Dellmann, W. W. Koelmans, M. D. Rossell, C. P. Rossel, E. Eleftheriou, “Oxygenated amorphous carbon for resistive memory applications”, Nature Communications, 2015
• W. Koelmans*, A. Sebastian, V. P. Jonnalagadda, D. Krebs, L. Dellmann, E. Eleftheriou, Projected phase-change memory devices, Nature communications, 6, 2015
• A. Sebastian*, M. Le Gallo, D. Krebs, “Crystal growth within a phase change memory cell”, Nature Communications, 5(4314), 1-9, 2014
• A.  Sebastian*, A. Pauza , C. Rossel, R. M. Shelby, A. F. Rodriguez, H. Pozidis and E. Eleftheriou, “Resistance switching at the nanometer scale in amorphous carbon”, New Journal of Physics, vol. 13, pp. 013020, 2011
• Sebastian*, N. Papandreou, A. Pantazi, H. Pozidis and E. Eleftheriou, “Non-resistance based cell-state metric for multi-level phase change memory”, Journal of Applied Physics, 110, 084505, 2011

NANOTECHNOLOGY:

• Shamsudhin, N. Laeubli, H. B. Atakan, H. Vogler, C. Hu, W. Haeberle, A. Sebastian, U. Grossniklaus and B. J. Nelson, “Massively parallelized pollen tube guidance and mechanical measurements on a Lab-on-a-Chip platform”, PLOS ONE, 11(12), 2016
• Tuma, A. Pantazi, D. R. Sahoo, P. Eib, G. Salis, H. Pozidis and A. Sebastian, “A high-bandwidth spintronic position sensor”, Nanotechnology, 25(37), 375501, 2014
• T. Tuma, A. Sebastian, J. Lygeros and A. Pantazi, “Four pillars of nanopositioning,” IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 2013
• Tuma, J. Lygeros, V. Kartik, A. Sebastian and A. Pantazi, “High-speed multiresolution scanning probe microscopy based on Lissajous scan trajectories,” Nanotechnology, 23(18), pp. 185501, May 2012
• A. Sebastian* and A. Pantazi, “Nanopositioning With Multiple Sensors: A Case Study in Data Storage,” IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 20(2), pp. 382-394, Mar. 2012.
• Bazaei, S. O. R. Moheimani and A. Sebastian, “An Analysis of Signal Transformation Approach to Triangular Waveform Tracking”, Automatica, vol. 47(4), pp. 838-847, Apr. 2011
• H. Bhaskaran, B. Gotsmann, A. Sebastian, U. Drechsler, M. A. Lantz, M. Despont, P. Jaroenapibal, R. W. Carpick, Y. Chen and K. Sridharan, “Ultralow nanoscale wear through atom-by-atom attrition in silicon-containing diamond-like carbon”, Nature Nanotechnology, vol. 5, pp. 181-185, Mar. 2010
• Bhaskaran, A. Sebastian and M. Despont, “Nanoscale PtSi tips for conducting probe technologies”, IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 128-131, January 2009.
• A. Sebastian* and D. Wiesmann, “Modeling and experimental identification of silicon micro-heater dynamics: A systems approach”, IEEE/ASME Journal of Micro-electromechanical Systems, vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 911-920, Aug. 2008.
• A. Sebastian*, A. Pantazi, H. Pozidis, and E. Eleftheriou, “Nanopositioning for Probe-based Data Storage,” IEEE Control Systems Magazine, pp. 26-35, August 2008
• Pantazi, A. Sebastian et al.,” IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 52, no. 4/5, Jul/Sep 2008.
• A. Sebastian* and S. Salapaka, “Design methodologies for robust nanopositioning”, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 13(6), pp. 868-876, Nov. 2005.
• A. Sebastian*, M. V. Salapaka, D. J. Chen and J. P. Cleveland, “Harmonic and power balance tools for atomic force microscopy”, Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 89(11), pp. 6473-6480, Jun. 2001.

SELECTED TALKS/LECTURES/PANELS:

LECTURES:

Future Computing Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Oct. 2021

Intelligence in chip: Tomorrow of integrated circuits, IEEE CASS seasonal school, Aug. 2021

Max Planck Institute of Microsctructure Physics, July 2021

Mondays in Memory (MiM), TU Vienna, June 2021

Lund University, June 2021

Computer Architecture Fall 2020, ETH Zurich, Dec. 2020

University College London, March 2020

Institute of Neuroinformatics, Univ. Zurich., Nov. 2019

Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2019

Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, April 2019

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, March 2019

Computer Systems Colloquium, Stanford University, Stanford, USA, Mar 2018

CDT Advanced Technology Lectures, Univ. of Cambridge, UK, 2016

Univ. of Oxford, UK, 2015

TUTORIALS:

Photonics online meetup, Jan. 2021

IEDM, San Francisco, Dec. 2019

ISCAS, Sapporo, Japan, May 2019

MRS Spring Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 2017

TALKS:

Keynote, IEEE International Conference on IC Design and Technology (ICICDT), Sep. 2021.

Invited Talk, Workshop on Materials Challenges for Memory (APL Materials), April 2021

Invited Talk, Neurotech Forum II, Workshop on Neuromorphic computing technologies: Opportunities, challenges and Applications, March 2021

Invited Talk, NEUROTECH educational program, Jan. 2021

Invited Talk, CASCONxEVOKE, Nov. 2020

Invited Talk, Nature conference on neuromorphic computing, Beijing, Oct. 2019

Ovshinsky Lecture, EP\COS, Grenoble, Sep. 2019

Invited Talk, CLEO Europe, Munich, Germany, June 2019

Invited Talk, VLSI, Kyoto, Japan, June 2019

Invited Talk, DATE Workshop, Florence, Italy, March 2019

Plenary Talk, ICEE, Bangalore, India, Dec 2018

Invited Talk, NVMTS, Sendai, Japan, October 2018

Invited Talk, E/PCOS, Catania, Italy, September 2018

Invited Talk, CIMTEC, Perugia, Italy, June 2018

Invited Talk, MRS Spring Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, April 2018

Invited Talk, mDAC: Memristor Technology, Desing, Automation and Computing, HiPEAC, Manchester, UK, Jan 2018

Keynote, 17th Non-volatile Memory Technology Symposium, Aachen, Germany, 2017

Keynote, International Conference on Memristive Materials, Devices and Systems, Athens, Greece, 2017

Invited Talk, Beyond CMOS: From Devices to Systems, Haifa, Israel, 2017

Invited Talk, MINDMEM Workshop, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2017

Invited Talk, CIMTEC, Perugia, Italy, 2016

Invited Talk, E/PCOS, Cambridge, UK, 2016

Invited Talk, Memristive Symposium, Dresden, Germany, 2016

Invited Talk, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 2016

Invited Talk, MRS Spring Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 2016

Keynote Talk, Memrisys, Cyprus, 2015

Invited Talk, Swiss Nano Convention, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 2015

PANELS:

Panelist, Vaishwik Bharatiay Vaigyanik Summit, Oct. 2020

Panelist, International workshop on network on chip architectures, Oct. 2020

Panelist, AICAS, Sep. 2020

RESEARCH IN THE NEWS:

Mimicking the brain: Deep learning meets vector-symbolic AI [IBM Research Blog]

Light and in-memory computing help AI achieve ultra-low latency [IBM Research Blog]

IBM is using light, instead of electricity, to create ultra-fast computing [ZDNet]

IBM adds noise to boost AI's accuracy on analog memory [Venturebeat]

The brains behind emerging AI [Nature Conference Report]

Photonic devices compute in memory: Nature highlight

In-memory computing using photonic memory devices [IBM Research Blog]

IBM reveals 8-bit analog chip with phase-change memory [IEEE Spectrum]

Dual 8-bit breakthroughs bring AI to the edge [IBM Research Blog]

Brain-inspired architecture could improve how computers handle data and advance AI [AIP]

Keep it simple: Towards single-elemental phase-change memory [IBM Research Blog]

Novel synaptic architecture for brain inspired computing [IBM Research Blog]

Glassy antimony makes monatomic phase change memory

IBM's new in-memory computing solution makes business AI training faster, easier

IBM: Our in-memory computing breakthrough will cut cost of training AI

IBM scientists demonstrate mixed-precision in-memory computing for the first time; Hybrid design for AI hardware [IBM Research Blog]

Understanding resistance drift in amorphous semiconductors

Celebrating Abu  Sebastian on National Inventor's day [IBM Research Blog]

IBM can run an experimental AI in memory, not on processors (MIT Tech Review)

Computational Memory [IBM Research Blog]

IBM PhD Fellowship to Nandakumar [IBM Research Blog]

Unsupervised learning with artificial neurons [IBM Research Blog]

Newsweek article on phase-change neuron

Kuenstliche Neuronen aus Rueschlikon

ERC Consolidator Grant [IBM Research Blog]

Projected memory (EE Times)

Projected Memory (Le Monde)

Carbon memory (EE Times)

Making memory with carbon (IBM Research Blog)

Sub-threshold transport in PCM (EE Times)

Threshold switching in PCM (EE Times)

Crystal growth in PCM (EE Times)

Crystal growth in PCM (IBM Research Blog)

Profile of a scientist (IBM Research Blog)