The University of Toronto is Canada's top research university with an annual budget for research of 1.2B Canadian dollars in 2016. It is the only Canadian institution named in Times Higher Education's first-ever listing of top universities working with the world's most innovative companies. U of T ranked 18th in the world and 1st in Canada, one notch ahead of Johns Hopkins University and four above the University of Cambridge. U of T is known for its culture of innovation, research partnerships that span the globe, a diverse array of collaborations with private sector and public sector organizations, and a vibrant entrepreneurship culture supported by a network of campus-linked accelerators and incubators.
Founded in 1909, The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) maintains a proud history of world-leading research and innovative education. We are the top-ranked ECE department in Canada and home to 100 professors, 649 graduate students and 1,513 undergraduates. In 2016, ECE was ranked 27th in the world and 11th in North America. Among our faculty members there are 28 Fellows of the IEEE, nine Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, 13 Fellows of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and four E.W.R. Steacie Fellows, a prize awarded to the brightest and most promising scientists and engineers across the country. ECE is a hotbed of research commercialization, with more than 160 inventions disclosed and 47 patents filed over the past five years-by far the most productive department for new inventions at the University of Toronto.
The VLSI Research Group led by Professor Sorin P. Voinigescu carry out leading research on novel electronic devices, THz and photonics systems on chip (SoCs), to demonstrate their commercial viability and new applications for nano-electronics, new products, new companies and wealth creation. The main applications are in telecommunications, radiometry, radio astronomy, high-resolution imaging, industrial, remote, and environmental sensing. Current research themes are: atomic-scale electronic devices and ICs for silicon quantum computing; THz sampling techniques for analog and mixed-signal processing; mm-wave radios, sensors, radars and imagers; and energy-efficient Tb/s photonic transceivers.
Key people
Sorin P. Voinigescu Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Sorin P. Voinigescu received the MSc degree in Electronics from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, in 1984 and the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, in 1994. Since 2002 he has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto, where he is a Professor. His research and teaching interests focus on atomic-scale electronic devices and their application in integrated circuits and Systems-on-Chip at frequencies beyond 300 GHz.
He is the author of several frequently-cited papers on Si and SiGe microwave and mm-wave devices and integrated circuits, and of a well-regarded book on High-Frequency Integrated Circuits published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. In 2008-2009 and 2015-2016 he spent sabbatical leaves at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Sunnyvale, CA, USA, at NTT's Device Research Laboratories in Atsugi, Japan, at Robert Bosch GmbH in Germany, and at UNSW in Sydney, where he conducted research on technologies and circuits for mm-wave radio, radar and sensors, and on 1Tb/s fiber-optic systems. In 2009-2010 he co-founded and was the CTO of Peraso Technologies which commercializes mm-wave radio WiGig and backhaul transceivers. In 2000, Dr. Voinigescu co-founded and was the CTO of Quake Technologies in Ottawa, Canada, which introduced the first commercial single-chip 10Gb/s SONET and 10GEthernet transceivers in 2001 and 2002, respectively, and which was acquired by AMCC in 2006 after 23 quarters of continuous revenue growth. Between 1994 and 2000 he was with NORTEL in Ottawa where he was responsible for projects in high-frequency characterization and statistical scalable compact model development for Si, SiGe and III-V devices. He also conducted research on wireless and optical fiber building blocks and transceivers in these technologies.
From 1984 through 1991 he worked as a microwave semiconductor device and circuits research engineer at the Research Institute for Electronic Components in Bucharest, and as Assistant Professor in the Electronics Department of the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest. Dr. Voinigescu is a IEEE Fellow member of the ExCom of the IEEE BCICTS and TPC member of IEEE ESSCIRC, IEEE IMS and IEEE IEDM. He was a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits in 2015 and 2017, and of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques in 2012. From 2003 to 2013 he served on the TPC and ExCOM of the IEEE CSICS and was the Conference Chair in 2012. Between 2008 and 2015 he was a member of the RF/AMS committee of the ITRS. He received NORTEL's President Award for Innovation in 1996 and, in 2013, he was recognized with the ITAC Lifetime Career Award for his contributions to the Canadian Semiconductor Industry.
Role in IQubits: Principle Investigator of UofT. Design, modelling, simulation, and test of electron/hole spin qubits and quantum processor gates, control and readout electronics.
Shai Bonen MASc/PhD Candidate
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Shai Bonen received the B.A.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) from the University of Toronto, ON, Canada where he is currently working towards his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering. His M.A.Sc. thesis focused on modelling and characterization of FDSOI CMOS devices for high performance RF electronics and quantum dot qubits towards implementing a monolithically integrated quantum computing processor. His Ph.D. work focuses on developing circuits and systems for "high" temperature 2 - 4 Kelvin monolithically integrated quantum processors. He has previously interned at Semtech Corporation (formerly Snowbush IP) (2015-16).
Role in IQubits: Design, modelling and characterization of FDSOI qubits and quantum processors
Mecca Mingjia Gong MASc Candidate
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Mecca M. Gong is currently pursuing his MASc degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada. His research focuses on the design of readout amplifiers for monolithically integrated quantum processors. He also works as an Analog Design Engineer at Semtech Corporation, designing laser drivers for high-speed optical transceivers. He received the BSc degree in Electrical Nano-engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada, in 2017. During his time there, he also completed internships at Alberta Health Services and Enbridge Pipeline Inc.
Role in IQubits: MASc Researcher, UofT qubit readout amplifier design.
Lucy Wu MASc Student
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Lucy Wu graduated from McGill University's Honours Electrical Engineering program receiving the Governor General's Silver Medal in 2018. She started her studies as an M.A.Sc. student that same year at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Professor Sorin Voinigescu. Her thesis is on the topic of mm-wave spin manipulation circuits for quantum-dot based qubit gates in FDSOI.
Role in IQubits: Design and testing of spin qubit control circuits.
Apurv Vyakarnam Bharadwaj MASc Candidate
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Apurv V. Bharadwaj received his BSc in Engineering Science from the Unversity of Toronto, Canada, in 2019. Upon starting his 3rd year of Engineering Science, he specialized in the physics option of the program. He had the opportunity to learn about the theory behind electronic devices and conduct experiments with said devices. He also had the opportunity to work fulltime at Advanced Microdevices in Markham, Canada, from May 2017 to July 2018. There, he learned about and worked within the ASIC process, with focus on SoC front end integration. He is currently working under the supervision of Professor Voinigescu at the University of Toronto to model and simulate electron/hole spin quantum devices using Synopsys's QuantumATK. Aside from working at the frontier of quantum devices, he has many other interests, including jazz, history, staying active at the gym or on the ski slopes, and working to perfect the six languages he knows.
Role in IQubits: MASc Researcher. Modelling and simulation of scaled FDSOI electron/hole spin qubits.
Suyash Tripathi MASc Candidate
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Suyash Tripathi completed his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati in Electronics and Electrical Engineering. His previous research work includes modelling, fabrication and characterization of organic semiconductor devices. Apart from this he has also worked with optical modelling of photonic crystals of 2D materials. He joined the group in 2019 and is currently working to develop compact models for semiconductor devices (primarily spin qubits) at cryogenic temperatures that capture the quantum behaviour of these devices.
Role in IQubits: MASc Researcher. Compact modelling and characterization of electron/hole spin qubits.
Thomas Jager MASc Researcher
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto
Thomas Jager received a BASc in Engineering Physics (Electrical Option) from Queen's University, Canada in 2020. He is now pursuing a MASc in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada. His research involves studying the coupling of THz photons with spin qubits, and the applications of these interactions.
Role in IQubits: MASc Researcher. Modelling and structure design for spin qubit to THz photon coupling.