University of Southampton Newcastle University Imperial College Bristol University Holistic: Next Generation Energy-Harvesting Electronics

Project Members

Project Director

Bashir Al-Hashimi Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi
Project Director
Principal Investigator
Director, Pervasive Systems Centre
University of Southampton
E-mail: bmah@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/bmah
Bashir M. Al-Hashimi (Co-Director of the Pervasive Systems Centre for multidisplinary research in Electronics and Computer Science). He is internationally recognised for his research into low-power design and test technology of electronic circuits and systems. His researches initiated new directions for system-level power management and power-constrained and low-cost testing of systems-on-chip used in hand-held devices. His research results have been adopted by a number of UK and international companies. In 2009, he was elected Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to low power design and test of integrated circuits and computing systems. He published over 240 refereed papers, authored and co-authored four research books, the most recent (System-on-Chip: Next Generation Electronics), IEE Press, 2006. Professor Al-Hashimi is the recipient of four best papers awards at prestigious international conferences for work in the areas of power constrained VLSI circuits, and reliable and energy-efficient system-level design, power constrained testing of VLSI circuits. Professor Al-Hashimi is the Editor-in-Chief of the IET Journal: Computers and Digital Techniques, and in 2008 he was awarded the 1st IET publishing award for research journal leadership. He is a member of numerous journal editorial boards and international conferences executive and technical programme committees including General Chair of the IEEE European Test Symposium (2006), Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) Programme Chair 2009, and General Chair DATE2011. Professor Al-Hashimi is Fellow of the IET, and Fellow of the British Computer Society.

Theme Leaders

Eric Yeatman Professor Eric Yeatman
Theme A Leader
Deputy Head of EEE Department
Imperial College
E-mail: e.yeatman@imperial.ac.uk
Web: www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/...
Eric M. Yeatman has been a member of academic staff in Imperial College London since 1989, and Professor of Micro-Engineering since 2005. He is deputy head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and has published more than 130 papers on optical devices and materials, and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). He holds several patents, and is co-founder and chairman of Microsaic Systems Ltd., a MEMS product development company spun-out of the college. He has been principal or co-investigator on more than 20 research council and industry supported projects, with over £6M in research funds raised. He has acted as a design consultant for several international companies, and technical advisory board member to two venture capital funds. His current research interests are in radio frequency and photonic MEMS devices, and energy scavenging for wireless sensor nodes.

Alex Yakovlev Professor Alex Yakovlev
Theme B Leader
Principal Investigator
Professor of Computing System Design
Newcastle University
E-mail: Alex.Yakovlev@newcastle.ac.uk
Web: www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/alex.yakovlev/
Alex Yakovlev has 25 years of research and academic experience in digital system design, modelling, and synthesis. His research interests include self-timed VLSI circuits and low power systems. He is the steering committee chairman of the IEEE International conference on application of concurrency to system design and TPC member of many international symposia on asynchronous systems.

Tom Kazmierski* Dr Tom Kazmierski
Theme C Leader
Senior Lecturer
University of Southampton
E-mail: tjk@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/tjk
Tom Kazmierski received the MSc degree in electronic engineering from Warsaw University of Technology (1973) and the Ph.D. degree from the Military Academy of Technology, Warsaw, (1976). He has contributed to the development of the IEEE, VHDL-AMS standard, served as Chair of the IEEE (VHDL-AMS) Working Group from 1999 to 2005. He has published over 100 papers and given a number of invited talks and tutorials in the area of mixed-signal synthesis and HDLs, including a one-day tutorial at DATE 09 conference on energy harvesting: principles, applications and design tools with Dr Beeby and Dr Mitcheson.

Other Investigators

Paul Mitcheson Dr Paul Mitcheson
Principal Investigator

Lecturer
Imperial College
E-mail: paul.mitcheson@imperial.ac.uk
Web: www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/...
Paul Mitcheson received the MEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Eng. (2001) and the PhD degree (2005) both from Imperial College, where he is a Lecturer in the Control and Power Research Group. His research interests are in micro-power generators and their associated power electronics. He has published over 20 papers, and a book chapter, on energy harvesting; one of these. co-authored with Professor Yeatman and other colleagues, is the most-cited paper in the IEEE/ASME Journal of MEMS since 2004.
   
Bernard Stark Dr Bernard Stark
Principal Investigator
Lecturer
University of Bristol
E-mail: bernard.stark@bristol.ac.uk
Web: www.bristol.ac.uk/eeng/...
Bernard Stark was recently appointed as a lecturer, following a 3-year research fellowship at Oxford Uni. and a 2-year postdoctoral research position at Imperial College working on power electronics for energy harvesting. He received a PhD from Cambridge Uni. in 2000. His research interests are low-power energy management. Recent research has focussed on extracting energy from harvesting materials, and the design of semiconductor devices to accumulate these minute amounts of energy. This work formed part of EPSRC GR/R09749/01 (Technologies for microengineered power systems), and EU FW5 IST-2000-26091 ORESTEIA (Embedded computing), and established self-powered medical sensors. Stark received a DTI Smart Award in 2003 to commercialise his patents in electronic displays.
 
Geoff Merrett Dr Geoff Merrett
Co-Investigator
Advisory Board Secretary
Lecturer
University of Southampton
E-mail: gvm@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/gvm
Geoff Merrett received the BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering (2004) and PhD Electronic and Electrical Engineering (2009) degrees from the University of Southampton, where he is presently a lecturer in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. His PhD thesis was entitled "Energy- and Information-Managed Wireless Sensor Networks: Modelling and Simulation," and he has research interests in energy-aware wireless sensing and sensor networks, energy harvesting, modelling and simulation, and pervasive healthcare. Dr Merrett is a Co-Investigator on two EPSRC funded projects in the areas of energy harvesting. He is actively involved in the School's Pervasive Systems Centre (PSC), and founded and chairs an interest group on wireless sensing (WiSE) as part of its "wireless sensing" research theme. He has authored a number of journal and conference publications in the area of wireless sensor networks, and a chapter on "Wireless Devices and Sensor Networks" in a book entitled "Energy Harvesting for Autonomous Systems." He is a member of the IET, IEEE and an active reviewer for a number of prestigious international journals.
   
Neil White Professor Neil White
Co-Investigator
Head of ECS
University of Southampton
E-mail: nmw@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/nmw
Neil White has over 20 years experience in the design and fabrication of intelligent sensor systems and energy harvesting. He is currently PI on EPSRC projects including the Platform Grant "New directions for intelligent sensors" and "Highly-efficient thermoelectric power harvesting". He is a co-founder of Perpetuum Ltd, a spin-out energy harvesting company. He has over 200 refereed publications including the most downloaded energy harvesters review article on the Measurement Science and Technology web site and has published the only paper to describe employing thick-film piezoelectric materials as energy harvesters.
 
Steve Beeby Professor Steve Beeby
Co-Investigator
Reader
University of Southampton
E-mail: spb@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/spb
Steve Beeby's research interests include energy harvesting, microsystems and sensors development. He was project co-ordinator of the recently completed EU-funded VIBES project that produced the smallest and most powerful energy harvesters-based wireless transmission system. He is a co-founder of Perpetuum Ltd, a spin-out energy harvesting company. He has published extensively in the areas of MEMS and micro-generators.
   
Koushik Maharatna Dr Koushik Maharatna
Co-Investigator
Senior Lecturer
University of Southampton
E-mail: km3@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/km3
Koushik Maharatna worked as a Scientist in the High Performance Microelectronics Institute, Frankfurt (2000- 2003), working on the Wireless Broadband Network and the Federal Government funded IBMS2 projects, targeting the implementation of single chip modem for IEEE 802.11 standard. He developed new algorithms and architectures for FFT/IFFT processor, Viterbi decoder, including their silicon implementation. He has published 35 refereed papers on DSP and low-power design.
 
Alex Bystrov Dr Alex Bystrov
Co-Investigator
Lecturer
Newcastle University
E-mail: a.bystrov@ncl.ac.uk
Web: www.ncl.ac.uk/eece/...
Alex Bystrov's research interests are in the area of asynchronous VLSI design, arbiters and synchronizers, with expertise in chip design and test (http://async.org.uk/chip-gallery.html). He has published over 30 papers.
   
Dr Neville McNeill Dr Neville McNeill
Co-Investigator
Lecturer
University of Bristol
E-mail: N.McNeill@bristol.ac.uk
Web: http://www.bris.ac.uk/eeng/...
Neville has several years experience working in the electric vehicle industry, designing motor drives, on-board power converters and battery pack chargers. As well as working on electric vehicles, he has also designed circuitry for railway traction applications. He holds the MPhil and PhD degrees for research into power electronics from Napier University in Edinburgh, is a member of the IET and is registered as a chartered engineer.

Research Staff

Anisha Mukherjee Dr Anisha Mukherjee
Researcher: Theme A
Research Associate
Imperial College
E-mail: anisha@imperial.ac.uk
Web: www2.ee.ic.ac.uk/...
Prior to joining Imperial College in 2007 as a Research Associate, Anisha G. Mukherjee was a RF Design Engineer with OKI Semiconductors, Singapore. As a RF Design Engineer for five years in OKI Semiconductors, she has had the opportunity to contribute to some of OKI's capstone achievements, e.g. IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee and Bluetooth RFIC single-chips designs. In Imperial College, her focus is to design and develop MEMS processes for various applications. She has developed a die carrier process technology to embed MEMS components on Post CMOS processed dies. Currently she is involved in development of an energy harvesting tuning micro generator.
   
Dr Steve Wright Dr Steve Wright
Researcher: Theme A
Researcher
Imperial College
E-mail: s.wright02@imperial.ac.uk
Web: http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/...
Dr Steve Wright has worked in the Electrical Engineering Department at Imperial College London researching the fabrication methods and properties of compound semiconductor thin film transistors, their use in addressing flat panel displays and integrated drive circuits for displays. More recent work has been on the development of materials and methods for producing high resistance, low TCR materials for high value resistors in integrated circuits, and also high dielectric constant materials for ICs.
 
Delong Shang Dr Delong Shang
Researcher: Theme B
Senior Research Associate
Newcastle University
E-mail: delong.shang@ncl.ac.uk
Web: www.ncl.ac.uk/eece/...
Dr. Delong Shang has 20 years of research and academic experiences in computer architecture, microprocessor/CPU design, digital system design, synchronous/asynchronous circuit (VLSI circuit) design, hardware modelling and synthesis. His research interests are in computer architecture, low power/power efficient embedded systems, asynchronous FPGA, self-timed VLSI circuits and intelligent asynchronous controller. He is a TPC member of a number of international conferences. He has been awarded the "Computers and Digital Techniques Premium", IEE Engineering Communities (2006), and the first prize of "Mentor Graphics' 10th Anniversary PCB & MCM Technology Leadership Awards" (1996), etc.
   
Fei Xia Dr Fei Xia
Resercher: Theme B
Senior Research Associate
Newcastle University
E-mail: fei.xia@ncl.ac.uk
Web: www.ncl.ac.uk/eece/...
Fei Xia has been an active researcher in asynchronous circuits and systems for 20 years. His main contributions have been in the areas of data communication between asynchronous units, arbiters and metastability, and system modelling, design and analyses. More recently he has developed an interest in low power and energy proportional computing and related issues. He has been a TPC member of a number of international conferences in related fields.
 
Leran Wang Dr Leran (Phil) Wang
Researcher: Theme C
Research Fellow
University of Southampton
E-mail: lw04r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/lw04r
Leran Wang received his MSc degree from the University of Liverpool and PhD degree from University of Southampton, in 2004 and 2009 respectively. Before coming to UK, he received the BEng degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2003. He is currently a research fellow at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. His research interest focus on HDL based modelling and optimisation of mixed physical domain systems for energy harvesting, automotive and MEMS applications.
   
Alex Weddell Dr Alex Weddell
Researcher: Theme C and Demonstrators
Research Fellow
University of Southampton
E-mail: asw@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/asw
Alex Weddell was awarded his MEng degree by the University of Southampton in 2005 and studied for his PhD, entitled "A comprehensive scheme for reconfigurable energy-aware wireless sensor nodes", at the same institution. He contributed to the Data Information Fusion Defence Technology Centre (DIF DTC) "Adaptive energy aware sensor networks" project and was worked under the EPSRC platform grant "New directions for intelligent sensors". He has experience with a range of energy harvesting devices and has developed a platform which supports a mix of energy sources to power an energy-aware wireless sensor node.
 
Dibin Zhu Dr Dibin Zhu
Researcher: Demonstrators
Research Fellow
University of Southampton
E-mail: dz@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/dz
Dibin Zhu was awarded MSc in RF Communication Systems in 2005 and PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2009, both by the University of Southampton. His PhD topic was "Methods of frequency tuning vibration-based micro-generators". He has contributed to multiple research projects on energy harvesting including the most recent one: TRIADE (Development of technology building blocks For structural health monitoring sensing devices in aeronautics) which is funded under EU FP7. His research interest is energy harvesting from various sources, e.g. vibration, wind, human movement, etc.

Research Students

Gyorgy Szarka Gyorgy Szarka
Research Student: Theme A
Postgraduate Research Associate
University of Bristol
E-mail: G.Szarka.04@bristol.ac.uk
Web: www.bris.ac.uk/eeng/...
Gyorgy Szarka was awarded his MEng degree in Communications and Multimedia Engineering after graduating from the University of Bristol in 2008. Currently, he is working towards a PhD in Power Electronics within the area of power conditioning of micro-power kinetic energy harvesters. His research interests include efficient power conversion at microwatt loads, ultra-low power control strategies for energy harvesters, and low-power environmental monitoring.
   
Plamen Proynov Plamen Proynov
Research Student: Theme A
Postgraduate Research Student
University of Bristol
E-mail: P.Proynov@bristol.ac.uk
Web: none
Plamen Proynov is currently working on a PhD in Energy Harvesting/Renewable Micro-Power Sources at the University of Bristol. Previously he worked as an automation engineer on design, installation and commissioning of industrial automation control systems. He received the B.Sc. (2005) and M.Sc. (2008) degrees in automation and control engineering from the University of Varna, Bulgaria.
 
Reza Ramezani Reza Ramezani
Research Student: Theme B
Postgraduate Research Student
Newcastle University
E-mail: reza.ramezani@ncl.ac.uk
Web: none
Reza Ramezani received his BSc in electronic engineering in 2005 in Iran then joining IUERC (Isfahan University Engineering Research Centre) for 3 years. He finished his MSc in communication and signal processing at University of Newcastle in 2009 where he is currently pursuing his PhD in the area of ultra low power designs.
   
Jatin Mistry Jatin Mistry
Research Student: Theme B
Postgraduate Research Student
University of Southampton
E-mail: jnm106@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/jnm106
Jatin Mistry graduated from the University of Southampton with a BEng in Electronic Engineering in 2009. He is currently pursuing his PhD in the area of ultra low power computing in the Pervasive Systems Centre at the same University.
 
Xuefu Zhang Xuefu Zhang
Research Student: Theme B
Postgraduate Research Student
Newcastle University
E-mail: xuefu.zhang@ncl.ac.uk
Web: none
Xuefu Zhang received his BEng in Measurement & Control Technology and Instruments in 2007 in China. He received his MSc in Microelectronics at Newcastle University upon Tyne in 2009 and where he pursues advanced studies in PhD in the area of Power Managements and Systems Switching Strategies for Energy Harvesting Systems.
   
Abdullah Baz Abdullah Baz
Research Student: Theme B
Postgraduate Research Student
Newcastle University
E-mail: abdullah.baz@ncl.ac.uk
Web: none
Abdullah Baz is a PhD candidate with the Microelectronics System Design (MSD) group at Newcastle University, working on the area of power adaptive computing. He received the B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Umm Al-Qura University in 2002, M.S. degree in computer engineering from King AbdulAziz University in 2006 and M.S. degree in communications and signal processing from Newcastle University in 2009. He has over 4 years experience in system and database administration.
 
Mustafa Imran Ali Mustafa Imran Ali
Research Student
Postgraduate Research Student
University of Southampton
E-mail: mia08r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/mia08r
Mustafa Ali is an MPhil/PhD student, working on energy management for systems that utilize energy harvesting. Previously, he worked as a hardware design engineer on design and verification of digital communication FPGAs. He holds the MS degree in Computer Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Saudi Arabia and the BEng degree in Computer Systems Engineering from NED University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.
     
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