Plenary Speakers

Stephen Y. Chou
Professor
Princeton University, USA

Dr. Stephen Y. Chou is the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton University and a serial entrepreneur. He is the founder and founding chairman of Nanonex Corp., NanoOpto Corp., and Essenlix Corp., and a co-founder of BioNano Genomics Inc. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a recipient of the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award, the IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award, and the Nanoimprint Pioneer Award. He is also a Fellow of the Packard Foundation, IEEE, AVS, ISNM, and OSA. Two of his technologies—nanoimprint and the nanochannel DNA analyzer—were recognized by MIT Technology Review as among the “Ten Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World.”

Over the past four decades, Dr. Chou’s pioneering research has advanced nanofabrication, nanodevices, bioengineering, and medical diagnostics, with broad, significant, and lasting impact on both academia and industry. His work created new research fields, new industries, and significant businesses, and generated billions of dollars in economic value. His best-known inventions include nanoimprint, a new paradigm in nanopatterning that has grown into a billion-dollar industry; the single-electron MOS memory (SEMM); gate-all-around (GAA) transistor; lithographically induced self-assembly (LISA); single-domain patterned media, a new paradigm for magnetic data storage; major advances in nanophotonics, particularly various subwavelength optical elements (i.e., meta-optics); the nanochannel single-DNA-molecule analyzer; the ultrasensitive D2PA biosensor; and the iMOST (Instant Mobile Self-Test) platform, a game-changing instant mobile self-test technology for health.

As a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Chou has founded, built, and led three startup companies to translate his inventions and vision—including nanoimprint and iMOST—into new industries and major commercial products with direct and substantial impact on society and the economy. He has authored more than 700 journal and conference papers and is the primary inventor on more than 400 patents, more than half of which have been granted.

The Invention of the Gate-All-Around (GAA) Transistor in 1996 (30 Years Ago): From Single-Electron MOS Memory to GAA

Jianbin Xu
Professor
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

Prof.  Dr.  Xu  received  his  B.Sc.  and  M.Sc.  from  Nanjing  University  in  1983  and  1986, respectively. Since 1988, he was highly privileged to study in the University of Konstanz, particularly under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Klaus Dransfeld (Member of German National Academy of Sciences; Founding Director of Institute for High Magnetic Fields, Max-Plank Society;  Former  Director  of  Institute for Solid  State  Research,  Max-Plank  Society).  His doctoral dissertation was focused on nanoscopic heat transport associated with electronic processes.  He  earned  his  doctorate  (Dr.rer.nat.)  in  1993. Afterwards,  he  joined  the Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He has been promoted to a Professor in the department since the midst of 2002, and named as Choh-Ming Li Professor of Electronic Engineering since August 2022. He serves as the Associate Dean (Mainland Affairs), Faculty of Engineering, and Director of Materials Science and Technology Research Center at CUHK, and Deputy Chairman of Hong Kong Materials Research  Society  (HKMRS).   Meanwhile,  he  is  currently  Academic  Vice   President  of Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Science.

Prof.  Dr.  Xu’s  research  interests  include  nanoscience  and  nanotechnology  for  electron devices  and  micro/nanoelectronics,  namely  2D  materials  and  devices;  scanning  probe techniques for electronics; advanced energy science and technology; interface engineering for materials and devices; physics and technology of organic semiconductors; functional and electronic oxides, etc.  He  has  published  c.a. 630  papers  in  peer-reviewed  professional journals and conferences, with c.a. 32000 SCI peer citations, and 37000 Google Scholar citations.  He  has  been  named  as  Highly  Cited  Researcher  multiple  times  by  Clarivate Analytics. Meanwhile, he has secured more than 50 competitive research grants. He actively participates in a myriad of professional activities and has served as Editor of IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, and Editorial Board of ACS Nano as well as conference/symposium chair in several international conferences. He is an elected Fellow of IEEE, Optica and Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, an elected Foreign Fellow of European Academy of Sciences, and Member of American Physical Society. He is a recipient of Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau Scholars (formerly Distinguished Young Scholar Fund for Overseas Chinese), awarded by NSFC, a nationally prestigious fund; The Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) in the category of Natural Sciences (2nd Class), Ministry of Education, China; Research Excellence Award by The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Vice-Chancellor’s Outstanding Fellow of Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Chang Jiang Scholar Chair Professor by Ministry of Education, China.

Reconfigurable Electronics and Photonics of Two-Dimensional Materials via Externally-Controlled Fields

Conventional  hardware  of  electronics  and  optoelectronics   is  typically  designed  for  a predefined operating function, whereas emerging edge-intelligence systems increasingly require devices that can adapt their sensing, memory, and computing properties to altering tasks and environments. Reconfigurable electronics provides a promising route toward such adaptive hardware by enabling device characteristics and functional states to be dynamically programmed after fabrication. Two-dimensional materials are particularly attractive for this purpose because their atomically-thin attributes and van der Waals interfaces allow carrier injection, electrostatic manipulation, charge trapping, and optical response to be efficiently modulated by external fields.

This presentation intends to show a unified view of reconfigurable electronics and photonics based  on  two-dimensional  materials.   It  begins  with  contact-engineered  reconfigurable Schottky-junction transistors, in which external drain bias reshapes carrier-injection barriers and reversibly switches the dominant transport polarity while low drain leakage currentsmaintained [1]. This bias-selective carrier injection provides a compact physical basis for dynamically reconfigurable transistor operation. By building upon this capability, nonvolatile charge-storage  functionality  is  incorporated  at  the  Schottky   interface  to   program  the interfacial  energy  landscape  [2].  The  resulting  devices  exhibit  dynamically  switchable clockwise and counterclockwise transfer hysteresis, enabling reversible transitions between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic behavior. The talk further discusses dual-gate van der Waals device architectures, where asymmetric gate electrodes are independently configured to control carrier distribution and interfacial transport [3]. Such electrostatic programmability enables tunable transistor characteristics, multifunctional memory operation, and integrated logic functions within compact heterostructures. Reconfigurable non-monotonic transistors are then introduced, in which programmable anti-ambipolar transport generates tunable nonlinear   signal    transformation    and    artificial-neuron   functionality.    The    adjustable non-monotonic  response  can  be  directly  utilized  for  physiological-signal  processing, providing  a  device-level  platform  for  adaptive  feature  extraction  and  neuromorphic classification [4].

Finally, the same reconfigurable design strategy is extended to optoelectronics. Electrically programmable  two-dimensional  photodiodes  enable  switchable  spectral  selectivity  and spectral  logic,  allowing  optical  sensing  and  elementary   information  processing  to   be implemented within the same device [5]. Physics-aware optical logic computing based on light-feature co-encoding further exploits the intrinsic nonlinear optical response of functional materials to process optical power and temporal information simultaneously [6].

Together, these studies show that the strong external-field sensitivity of two-dimensional materials   can   be   translated    into   programmable   carrier   injection,   charge   storage, non-monotonic   transport,   and   optical    response.   This   commonly-appeared   physical framework enables dynamically configurable devices spanning from transistors, memories, synapses, logic elements, artificial neurons, photodetectors, to optical computing systems, offering a pathway toward compact and energy-efficient adaptive hardware for future edge intelligence.

Keywords:  Two-dimensional  materials;  reconfigurable  electronics;  nonvolatile  memory; multifunctional logic; in-sensor computing; optical computing.

Acknowledgements: The work is in part supported by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong,  particularly,  via  Grant  Nos.  AoE/P-701/20,  14220022,  14212424,  CRF  Group Research  Scheme  (No.  C4001-23GF,  C4050-21EF,  C1015-21EF,  C4028-20EF),  CUHK Group  Research  Scheme, CUHK  Postdoctoral  Fellowship,  Basic  and Applied  Research Foundation of Guangdong Province (No.2023B1S1S120049).

References

[1] Y.  Zhou,  L.  Tong,  Z.  Chen,  L.  Tong,  Y.  Pang,  and  J.  B.  Xu,  “Contact-engineered reconfigurable two-dimensional  Schottky junction field-effect transistor with  low  leakage currents,” Nature Communications, vol. 14, 4270, 2023.

[2]  Y. Zhou, L. Tong, Z. Chen, L. Tong, H. Li, Y. Pang, and J. B. Xu, “Vertical Nonvolatile Schottky-Barrier-Field-Effect  Transistor  with  Self-Gating  Semimetal  Contact,”  Advanced Functional Materials, vol. 33, 2213254, 2023.

[3]  Y. Pang, Y. Zhou, L. Tong, and J. B. Xu, “2D Dual Gate Field-Effect Transistor Enabled Versatile Functions,” Small, vol. 20, 2304173, 2024.

[4]   Y.  Pang, Y. Zhou,  S. Qiu, L. Tong, N. Zhao, and J. B. Xu, “Artificial non-monotonic neurons based on nonvolatile anti-ambipolar transistors,” Nature Communications, vol. 16, 3188, 2025.

[5]  X.  Guo,  Y.  Zhou,  Y.  Zhang,  X.  Zhao,  Y.   Pang,   L.  Tong,  Z.  Sun,  and  J.   B.  Xu, “Two-Dimensional  Reconfigurable  Photodiode for  In-Sensor Color  Filtering and Spectral Logic,” Advanced Materials, vol. 38, e72975, 2026.

[6]  L. Tong, L. Xu, G. Yang, X. Huang, W. Shi, W. Ju, M. Tang, X. Miao, P. Wang, J. B. Xu, and L. Ye, “Physics-Aware Reconfigurable Optical Logic Computing Scheme Through Light Feature Co-Encoding,” Advanced Functional Materials, e75209, 2026.

Yu Sun
Professor
University of Toronto, Canada

Yu Sun is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, with joint appointments in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto (UofT). He is a Tier I Canada Research Chair and was the founding Director of the UofT Robotics Institute. His lab specializes in developing innovative technologies and instruments for manipulating and characterizing cells, molecules, and nanomaterials. He is a Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of The Academy of Science of Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, an International Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and an International Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He was elected Fellow of IEEE, ASME, AIMBE, AAAS, NAI, CSME, and EIC for his work on micro-nano robotic systems and devices. Among the awards he received were an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship, NSERC Synergy Award of Innovation, IEEE McNaughton Gold Medal, IEEE EMBS Technical Achievement Award, and IEEE NTC Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology. He is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Trans. Automation Science and Engineering and an editorial board member of the AAAS journal, Science Robotics.

Robotic Cell Surgery

The capability of manipulating micro and nanometer-sized objects, such as cells and nanomaterials opens new frontiers in robotic surgery, disease diagnostics, industrial applications and enables new discoveries in many disciplines such as biology, medicine, and materials science. The past two decades have witnessed spurred development of micro-nanorobotic systems and technologies with common hallmarks of precision instrumentation, sensing, actuation, and control. This talk will begin with a brief review of the evolution of the robotic micromanipulation field, followed by an overview of challenges, opportunities, and representative advances recently made in this field. Examples of robotic cell manipulation systems for clinical surgery and drug screen will be given; sub-micrometer position control and sub-nanoNewton force control for realizing 3D intracellular and intra-tissue manipulation and measurement will be introduced; and mechanical nanosurgery of chemoresistant tumors will be discussed. 

Sorin Cotofana
Professor
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Sorin Cotofana (IEEE Fellow) received the MSc degree in Computer Science from the “Politechnica” University of Bucharest, Romania, and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He is currently with the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Faculty, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands. His current research is focused on: (i) the design and implementation of dependable/reliable systems out of unpredictable/unreliable components; (ii) ageing assessment/prediction and lifetime reliability aware resource management; and (iii) unconventional computation paradigms and computation with emerging nano-devices. He (co-)authored more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed international journal and conferences, and received 12 international conferences best paper awards, e.g., 2012 IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, 2012 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Nanoscale Architectures, 2005 IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, 2001 International Conference on Computer Design. He served as Associate Editor for TCAS I (2009-2011), TNANO (2008-2014), and TC (2019-2022); Senior Editor for TNANO (2014-2019); Editor in Chief for TNANO (2000-2025); member of JETCAS Senior Editorial Board (2016-2017), and TMSCS Steering Committee member (2014-2018); Chair of the Giga-Nano CASS TC (2013-2015); IEEE Nano Council CASS representative (2013-2014); CASS Distinguished Lecturer (2019-2022); CASS BoG member (2020-2025) and has been actively involved as Reviewer, Technical Program Committee (TPC) member, and TPC (track) and general (co)-chair, in the organization of numerous international conferences.

Spin Wave Based Computing: Can Spin Wave Warriors Annihilate Charge Legions?

In this presentation we provide an overview of recent efforts towards developing computing systems based on Spin Waves (SW) instead of charges and voltages. Note that SW computing constitutes a spintronics subfield, which utilizes magnetic excitations for computation and memory applications. We start with an introduction to magnetic interactions, SW physics, and basic SW computing mechanisms. Subsequently, we review state-of-the-art SW devices, i.e., SW interaction-based Majority gates, SW phase rotation Threshold Logic gates, and SW switch Boolean Logic gates, while discussing the specific challenges ahead when attempting to combine such SW gates to obtain circuits and ultimately computing systems. We consider essential aspects, e.g., gate interconnection, logic levels restoration, gate input-output consistency, and fan-out achievement, and we argue that practically relevant pure SW circuits cannot operate independently and they need to be embedded into conventional Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) circuit wrappers to obtain complete functional hybrid computing systems. We discuss challenges towards the practical realization of such hybrid SW-CMOS systems and present estimates of their potential performance, which suggest that hybrid SW-CMOS systems exhibit ultralow-power operation and may ultimately outperform conventional CMOS circuits in terms of power-delay-area product. Finally, we take a different perspective on SW physics and demonstrate that by leveraging Gilbert dumping, and otherwise unwanted phenomenon, we can obtain extremely effective convolution, an essential neural networks computation kernel, implementations. We conclude with a brief presentation of the SPIDER project approach (EC contract number 101070417), which is the first ever attempt to experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of hybrid SW-CMOS systems.

Kaustav Banerjee
Professor
UC Santa Barbara, USA

Kaustav Banerjee is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Nanoelectronics Research Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research established atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials as scalable platforms for energy-efficient nanoelectronics, spanning transistors, beyond-copper interconnects, RF passives, memory, and monolithic three-dimensional integration. He pioneered predictive, device-physics-driven frameworks that revealed fundamental scaling limits of silicon–copper technologies and defined physically realistic, manufacturable pathways beyond them.

His contributions include the invention of a graphene-based kinetic inductor that resolved long-standing barriers to ultra-compact, high-frequency integrated systems, and the development of intercalated graphene interconnects independently validated and incorporated into advanced foundry technology roadmaps. To accelerate translation toward semiconductor manufacturing, he co-founded Destination 2D in 2021 to advance CMOS-compatible graphene platforms extending from interconnect scaling to thermal management and advanced packaging integration.

Professor Banerjee is a Fellow of IEEE, APS, AAAS, JSPS, and AIIA, and a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher. His honors include the Humboldt Foundation Bessel Prize, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, and the JSAP Fellow International distinction from the Japan Society of Applied Physics.

Atoms to Architectures: 2D Materials for Energy-Efficient Nanoelectronics

As conventional semiconductor technologies reach fundamental limits in electrostatics, interconnect resistivity, power density, and thermal management, sustaining nanoelectronic scaling in the AI era—and the energy efficiency of the global computing infrastructure it underpins—requires new materials and integration paradigms. Two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials—including graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides—provide atomic-scale thickness control, tunable electronic structure, and distinctive transport physics. Through predictive, device-physics-driven frameworks coupled with experimentally validated platforms, Banerjee’s work established how 2D materials overcome intrinsic scaling barriers of silicon–copper technologies—advancing beyond isolated demonstrations to define physically realistic, industry-aligned scaling trajectories with system-level consequences.

This plenary presents a nanoscale-physics perspective on 2D materials as foundational platforms bridging atoms to architectures, enabling continued scaling and dense monolithic three-dimensional (3D) integration. Core principles governing contacts, electrostatics, and energy transport will be examined, together with manufacturable pathways toward 2D transistors and intercalated graphene interconnects—advances independently validated, reflected in advanced foundry technology roadmaps, and translated toward industrial deployment through Destination 2D, co-founded by Banerjee.

Saptarshi Das
Ackley Professor of Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Dr. Das received his B.Eng. degree (2007) in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, India, and Ph.D. degree (2013) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University. He was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar (2013-2015) and Assistant Research Scientist (2015-2016) at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). Dr. Das joined the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM) at Penn State University in January 2016. Dr. Das was the recipient of the Young Investigator Award from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2017 and the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2021. Das Research Group at Penn State leads a new multidisciplinary area of science, namely biomimetic sensing, neuromorphic computing, and hardware security inspired by natural designs found in the animal world that allow evolutionary success in resource-constrained environments.

Scaling 2D CMOS: From Transistors to 3D Integrated Systems

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors provide a powerful platform for pushing transistor scaling beyond the limits of conventional CMOS while opening new pathways for integration. In this talk, I will highlight recent advances in scaling 2D field-effect transistors, with particular emphasis on achieving high-performance p-type devices to enable true CMOS operation and their implementation in functional logic circuits. I will then highlight the progress in monolithic and heterogeneous 3D integration, including three-tier 2D FETs, 3D CMOS, 3D heterogeneous platforms for near-sensor computing, self-powered 3D systems with integrated silicon photovoltaics, and 3D SRAM architectures. Finally, I will briefly discuss additional functional uses of 2D materials, including on-chip thermometry and their role as robust hard masks for advanced patterning. Together, these advances illustrate the transition of 2D materials from scaled transistors to fully integrated 3D electronic systems.