ACM NanoCom 2021

8th ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication

Virtual Conference, September 7-9, 2021

Endorsed by

IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications (MBMC-TC)

Keynote Speakers

Keynote 1: Physical Layer Security in Terahertz Wireless Links
Session Chair: Josep Miquel Jornet (Northeastern University)
Time: Tuesday, September 7 - 5:15-6:15 (PST), 8:15-9:15 (EST), 14:15-15:15 (CET), 21:15-22.15 (JST)
	Daniel M. Mittleman Professor of Engineering School of Engineering Brown University Box D Providence, RI 02912, USA

Considerations of wireless security have recently moved to the forefront of research efforts in the field of terahertz wireless communications. These considerations are quite distinct from those related to security at lower frequencies (below 6 GHz), not only because of the highly directional transceivers that such high-frequency links will inevitably require, but also because of numerous other unique characteristics, including the very high free-space path loss, losses due to water vapor absorption lines, and the frequency-dependent diffraction patterns that emerge in the far field of most transmitters. These differences offer new opportunities for eavesdroppers and jammers to implement a successful attack, but also new possibilities for counter-measures that can be implemented at the physical layer of the system. Here, we present a few examples to illustrate the unique security concerns that arise in the context of THz links.

Short Biography

Dr. Mittleman received his B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988, and his M.S. in 1990 and Ph.D. in 1994, both in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Dr. Charles Shank . He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a post-doctoral member of the technical staff, working first for Dr. Richard Freeman on a terawatt laser system, and then for Dr. Martin Nuss on terahertz spectroscopy and imaging. Dr. Mittleman joined the ECE Department at Rice University in September 1996. In 2015, he moved to the School of Engineering at Brown University . His research interests involve the science and technology of terahertz radiation. He is a Fellow of the OSA, the APS, and the IEEE, and is a 2018 recipient of the Humboldt Research Award. He has just recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the International Society for Infrared Millimeter and Terahertz Waves.

[Back to Program]

Keynote 2: New Directions in DNA-Based Data Storage
Session Chair: Urbashi Mitra (University of Southern California)
Time: Wednesday, September 8 - 6:00-7:00 (PST), 9:00-10:00 (EST), 15:00-16:00 (CET), 22:00-23:00 (JST)
	Olgica Milenkovic Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

DNA-based data storage is an emerging archival repository and computational paradigm that exploits unique properties of the DNA molecules to ensure ultra-high densities, extreme robustness/durability, and ease of information copying/replication. The main issues that stand in the way of practical deployment of DNA-based storage platforms are the high cost of information recording and the large latency of both the read and write systems.

We present an overview of our recently proposed approaches for addressing these concerns based on multidimensional information recording and retrieval. We describe how to increase the size of the DNA alphabet to improve the cycle efficiency of recorders and how to use readily available native DNA and the topological dimension of the molecule to accommodate rewritable metadata. We also introduce new machine learning and computer vision methods the aim to reduce the overhead in the cost of the system design by eliminating the need for expensive worst-case error-control redundancy. Whenever the learning approaches prove to be inadequate, we provide descriptions of new coding approaches needed and the means to implement them.

Short Biography

Olgica Milenkovic is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Mathematics in 2001 and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2002, both from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prof. Milenkovic is heading a group focused on addressing unique interdisciplinary research challenges spanning the areas of algorithm design and computing, bioinformatics, coding theory, machine learning and signal processing. Her scholarly contributions have been recognized by multiple awards, including the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Dean’s Excellence in Research Award, and several best paper awards. In 2013, she was named a Center for Advanced Study Associate and Willett Scholar while in 2015 she became a Distinguished Lecturer of the Information Theory Society. She is an EEE Fellow and has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications. In 2009, she was the Guest Editor-in-Chief of a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory on Molecular Biology and Neuroscience, while in 2019 she served as Guest Editor-in-Chief of a special dedicated to the interdisciplinary work of V.I. Levenshtein.

[Back to Program]

Keynote 3: Architecting the Human Intranet
Session Chair: Laura Galluccio (University of Catania)
Time: Thursday, September 9 - 8:00-9:00 (PST), 11:00-12:00 (EST), 17:00-18:00 (CET), 00:00-01:00 (+1) (JST)
	Jan M. Rabaey Professor in the Graduate School, UC Berkeley CTO STCO Division, IMEC, Belgium

The world as we know it is going through some major upheavals: climate change, pandemics and technology-induced societal changes are upsetting our world-picture with no real end in sight. Hence, an extremely relevant question is how ‘we humans’ are going to cope with this rapid evolution. One plausible answer is for us to use those same technologies to evolve ourselves, and to equip us with the necessary tools to interact with, survive, and prosper in spite of (or in light of) these changes.

Various wearable devices have been or are being developed to do just that. However, their potential to create a whole new set of human experiences is still largely unexplored. To be effective, functionality cannot be centralized and needs to be distributed to capture the right information at the right place. This requires a human intranet, a platform that allows multiple distributed input/output and information processing functions to coalesce and form a single application. In this presentation, we focus on the integrative aspects of such an intranet, complicated by the extreme energy and form-factor limitations imposed on the wearable/implanted devices. An important aspect that emerges is that the human intranet should not only be able to learn from experience, but capable of dealing with changes in both the environment and in itself. Moreover, it should be able to do so on a continuous base. A number of actual applications ranging from smart prostheses, intelligent hearables, and brain-machine interfaces will be discussed.

Short Biography

Jan is a Professor in the Graduate School in the EECS Department at the University of California at Berkeley, where he held of the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professorship for over 30 years before retiring. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, he was a research manager at IMEC from 1985 until 1987. He is a founding director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) and the Berkeley Ubiquitous SwarmLab, and has served as the Electrical Engineering Division Chair at Berkeley twice. In 2019, he also became the CTO of the System-Technology Co-Optimization (STCO) Division of IMEC, Belgium. Prof. Rabaey has made high-impact contributions to a number of fields, including advanced wireless systems, low power integrated circuits, mobile devices, sensor networks, and ubiquitous computing. His current focus is of the interaction between the cyber and the biological world (amongst many other things). He is the recipient of major awards, amongst which the IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Award, the European Design Automation Association (EDAA) Lifetime Achievement award, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award, and the SRC Aristotle Award. He is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium, and has received a number of honorary doctorates. He has been involved in a broad variety of start-up ventures.

[Back to Program]