People

Qijun (Mandy) Liu

liuq@bu.edu

Mandy Liu graduated with a B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer System Engineering (dual major) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). She joined WISE-Circuits in 2018 as a Ph.D. student.

Mandy has been a recipient of a number of awards including the New York Merit Scholarship for Academic Excellence, the Rensselaer Leadership Award, and the Glenna and Robert Leonard ’61 Scholarship. She is also a member of the engineering honor societies Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu. She received 2019 International Microwave Symposium (IMS) and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium Ph.D. Student Sponsorship and 2020 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Student Travel Grant Award (STGA).

Mandy's current research work expands on interdisciplinary topics, where she develops fully-integrated hardware solutions specifically for extreme low-power and scalable biomedical applications.

TIMUR ZIRTILOGLU

timurz@bu.edu

Timur Zirtiloglu received his B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2019 and joined Boston University as a Ph.D. student in the same year. In 2018 he interned at Institute of Electron Devices and Circuits at Ulm University, and participated in research projects at Sabanci University Microelectronics research (SUMER) group during his bachelor studies. His research interests include Analog and Mixed-Signal electronics, Analog-to-Digital converters and Readout circuits, RFIC T/R modules, architectural and physical layer communication circuits design.

Awards & Scholarships:

Arslan Riaz

arslanr@bu.edu

Arslan Riaz received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, in 2018. He worked as a research assistant at the Electrical Engineering Department in Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) from 2018 to 2019. His research was focused on RF Energy Harvesting for IoTs.

He joined Boston University in September 2019 as a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Currently, he is a third-year Ph.D. student at Wireless Integrated Systems and Extreme Circuits (WISE-Lab), led by Prof. Rabia Yazicigil. His Ph.D. research is oriented towards the development of energy-efficient and secure wireless communication systems in collaboration with MIT and Maynooth University.

Awards & Scholarships:

Alperen Yasar

ayasar@bu.edu

Alperen Yasar graduated from Sabanci University in 2021 with a BSc degree with a major in Electronics Engineering and a minor in Physics. He did his internship in AntSis Electronics, Turkey, and worked on several projects in collaboration with Sabanci University Microelectronics Research (SUMER). He joined Boston University for PhD in 2021. He's interested in RFIC, analog/digital IC, and FPGA designs.

Zeynep Ece Kizilates

zecek@bu.edu

Ece Kizilates received her B.S. degree in 2022, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Turkey. Her undergraduate research focused on MEMS device design and characterization. She was awarded a scholarship from TUBITAK for her contributions to the research Project in collaboration with the ULTRAMEMS research group in METU. She joined Boston University in September 2022 as a Ph.D. student and she was awarded the College of Engineering Dean’s Fellowship. She is in the WISE-circuits group led by Prof. Rabia Yazicigil. Her research focuses on VLSI design. She is currently working on developing fully integrated circuits for all-in-one data decoders to enable energy-efficient and secure wireless communications in collaboration with MIT and Maynooth University.

Arman Tan

armantan@bu.edu

Arman Tan graduated from Sabanci University in 2022 with a BSc degree with a major in Electronics Engineering and a minor in Mathematics. He did his internship in Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, and worked on several projects in collaboration with Sabanci University Microelectronics Research Group (SUMER). He joined Boston University for PhD in 2022. He's interested in RFIC and Analog IC design.

Dilara Caygara

dilarac@bu.edu

Dilara Caygara graduated from Middle East Technical University (METU) with a B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering with a biomedical concentration and a double major in Physics with a particle & nuclear physics concentration. She also did internships about Neuroscience, Lorentz Field Electrical Impedance Tomography, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, focusing mainly on RF hardware. Coming from a versatile background, Dilara is interested in interdisciplinary projects addressing hardware problems for cutting-edge biomedical applications. Awards & Scholarships Bülent Kerim Altay Award for outstanding GPA, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department at Middle East Technical University, May 2022 TÜBİTAK-BIDEB (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey-Directorate of Science Fellowships and Grant Programmes) 2205 Undergraduate Scholarship, September 2017-June 2022 Erasmus+ Internship Scholarship, June 2019-August 2019

Akshaya Bali

abali@bu.edu

Akshaya Bali received B.Tech. Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Amity University, Noida in 2019. He joined Boston University as a Master's Student in Computer Science in Fall 2022, before which he worked at Publicis Sapient, Gurugram, India as an Analytics Engineer and Interned at Jetsons Robotics, India as an IoT Research Intern. He is interested in Digital Circuit Design and Hardware implementation of Experimental Algorithms.

Seif Ibrahim

seif@bu.edu

Seifallah Ibrahim is a Senior at BU studying Electrical Engineering with a minor in Physics. He joined WISE circuit group at the beginning of his senior year. His interests are IC design, fabrication, and optoelectronics.

Yidi Wu

yidiwu@bu.edu

Yidi majors in Electrical Engineering (ENG'23) at Boston University. Yidi is interested in analog IC and embedded systems.

Peter Crary

pcrary@bu.edu

Peter Crary is a senior at Boston University studying Electrical Engineering. Peter is interested in RF and analog circuit design and measurement.

Post Doctoral Researchers

Furkan Ercan

fercan@bu.edu

Furkan Ercan received his Ph.D. degree from Integrated Systems for Information Processing (ISIP) Lab at McGill University in 2020. His Ph.D. research featured the development of practical algorithms and implementations of Polar Codes, the newest channel coding scheme embodied in the 5G wireless communications standard. He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Middle East Technical University (Northern Cyprus Campus) in 2011 and 2015, respectively. In between his academic journey, Furkan also took roles in industry; he worked at Intel Corporation from 2011 to 2012, focusing on system-level energy efficiency; and at Octasic Inc. from 2020 to 2021, focusing on 5G PHY development.

He currently serves as a Postdoctoral Associate with the WISE-Circuits group, working with Prof. Rabia Yazicigil. Furkan's current research is on the development of Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding, a powerful universal decoding algorithm that can virtually work with any coding scheme ever designed, even ones that don't yet exist. He currently explores GRAND with a focus on its potential uses in physical layer security.

Furkan enjoys developing decoder algorithms, realizing them in software, and implementing them in hardware. He also takes joy in trying to explain how decoding algorithms work in theory. Furkan actively serves as a reviewer for numerous distinguished journals and conferences, and he is the recipient of several prestigious awards in the fields of teaching, research, fellowship, and professional volunteering. Beyond professional activities, Furkan is into photography and videography, and recently into music. More information can be found on his website.

Saraja Kadambari

saraja@bu.edu

Saraja Kadambari graduated with a B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Indraprastha University, New Delhi. She joined WISE-Circuits in February 2022.

At WISE circuits she worked on the SDR implementation of GRAND in collaboration with MIT and Maynooth University as a part of the MS Project. She was also programmed VC 707 FPGA for MIMO system to establish communication between FPGA and ADC board.

Year of graduation: 2023. First position after graduation: Apple, SoC Physical Design Engineer

Vaibhav Bansal

vbansal@bu.edu

Vaibhav Bansal has completed his Masters at Boston University, MA with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Vaibhav was an Engineer from Thapar University (TIET), India. He studied Mechatronics Engineering and was awarded scholarships for Outstanding performance in academics. Vaibhav is fondly interested in researching on high-speed digital circuit design, reconfigurable computing systems using FPGAs and high performance computing systems. He has also done few assignments on same and intends to pursue them further. He was working on microchip module prototyping using high performance FPGA platforms for a project in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Year of graduation: 2020. First position after graduation: AMD, Silicon Design Engineer

Zachary Capone

Zachary Capone is a senior at Boston University studying Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Engineering.

Zachary joined WISE Circuits at the end of his junior year.

Zachary's interests include circuit design and software implementation in problem solving.

Daniel Kao

Daniel Kao is majoring in Electrical Engineering (ENG ‘22) and minoring in Physics at Boston University. He joined WISE circuits as a junior during the summer of 2021.

Daniel made the Dean’s List in the fall 2020 semester.

Daniel is interested in circuit design, quantum physics and reinforcement learning. Some of his hobbies include traveling, photography, disc golf, and snowboarding.

Christianna Roggeveen

Christianna Roggeveen majors in Biomedical Engineering (ENG'22) at Boston University.

Christianna made the dean's list in Spring 2021.

Christianna is interested in signal processing and medical device design.

Dylan Nash

Dylan Nash was researching physical layer attacks on different localization techniques. He was also interested in RF frequency circuit design. Research in signal processing also interests him especially when it mixes with analog circuit design.

Academically, Dylan pursued a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering focusing on analog circuit design and signal processing. He has been on the Dean's list multiple times.

Alongside research and academics, Dylan was a lead electrical engineer for the rocket club and has designed the hardware for both ground systems and flight control systems.

Year of Graduation: 2020. First position after graduation: Anokiwave, Staff RFIC Layout Design Engineer

Elizabeth Diamond

Elizabeth Diamond has completed her undergraduate in Computer Engineering (ENG ‘22) from Boston University.

Elizabeth has been on the Dean’s List Fall 2018.

Elizabeth is interested in data system processing and integrated circuits.

Year of graduation: 2022. First position after graduation: Trend Micro, FPGA Verification Engineer

Jonathan Ngo

Jonathan Ngo did his undergrad in Electrical Engineering (ENG '22) at Boston University where he joined WISE circuits in his junior year in 2021.

Jonathan made Dean's List in 2019.

Jonathan's interests include digital logic design and integrated circuits.

Year of graduation: 2022. First position after graduation: Raytheon Intelligence & Space, Engineer I

Eyyup Tasci

Eyyup Tasci is majoring in Electrical & Electronics Engineering at Boğaziçi University. He is also a double major program student in Mathematics.

Eyyup joined WISE circuits as a junior student in the 2021 summer.

Eyyup's research interests are integrated circuits, communication systems, and analog signal processing.