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• May

  14

  ECE Seminar: Vasileios Tzoumas

  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

  11:00 AM L440, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  A grand engineering challenge is to develop collaborative teams of distributed, heterogeneous autonomous robots that rapidly establish situational awareness in mixed indoor/outdoor, cluttered, and unknown environments—especially when the team must primarily rely on robot-to-robot communication. Such capabilities could transform emergency response, defense, and inspection and maintenance. In this talk, I will present my lab’s physical-AI efforts to improve scalability and reliability in control and distributed coordination through: (i) morphable quadrotors that provide maneuverability, aerial manipulation, and disturbance resilience, enabling reliable operation in clutter; (ii) on-the-fly learning methods for predictive control that enable rapid adaption to unknown dynamics and disturbances with provable regret and stability; and (iii) distributed coordination algorithms that quantify the value of collaboration—who should communicate with whom, and when—to scale multi-robot coordination under communication delays and bandwidth constraints. Key in our approach is to treat the systems’ “morphology” (“body”) as an optimization variable: the robot’s structure at the single-agent level and the mesh-network topology at the multi-agent level. Then, building on bandit learning, nonlinear MPC, and submodular optimization, we co-design resource-minimal, performance-aware algorithms for adaptive coordination and control. I will present results on quadrotor hardware and in large-scale simulations (40+ robots) under realistic data-rate limitations, and conclude with open challenges.

  Vasileios Tzoumas is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (postdoc at MIT; Ph.D. at U of Pennsylvania). His research is on co-adaptive physical and artificial intelligence for scalable and reliable cyber-physical systems in resource-constrained, unstructured, and contested environments, such as robots and networked systems in defense, disaster response, and smart cities. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award on networked embodied intelligence, an Army Research Office Early Career Program (ECP) award on resource-aware distributed optimization and bandit learning, the Best Paper Award in Robot Vision at the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), an Honorable Mention from the 2020 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), and was a Best Student Paper Finalist Award at the 2017 IEEE Conference in Decision and Control (CDC) for a paper on robust and adaptive resource allocation and multi-agent coordination.

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  TIME Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

  LOCATION L440, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Amani Walker    amani.walker@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

• May

  19

  ECE Seminar: Jelena Vuckovic

  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

  10:00 AM L440, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  There is now a broad agreement that photonics is essential for reducing energy consumption of AI hardware through optical interconnects, but quantum technologies also need photonics for scaling. This is true even for “non-photonic” quantum systems based on superconductors, or trapped atoms and ions in vacuum. For example, new types of spatial light modulators and switches are needed to trap and control atoms and ions, microwave to optical quantum transducers are needed for networking superconducting processors, chip-scale laser systems are required for controlling atoms or spin qubits in solids, and very high efficiency integrated photonics is needed for quantum networks, sensors, and chip-based semiconductor quantum systems. Unfortunately, the desired level of performance and some of the functionalities are not available even in today’s best integrated photonics. We show how this can be addressed by photonics inverse design combined with emerging materials, new nanofabrication and heterogenous integration approaches. Specific examples include development of miniaturized titanium:sapphire lasers and amplifiers on chip, quantum network nodes in diamond, and a quantum simulator with silicon carbide color centers. Classical photonic technologies that will be discussed include fast, compact and error-free chip-scale optical interconnects, as well as CMOS compatible laser isolators and frequency stabilizers.

  Jelena Vuckovic (PhD Caltech 2002) is the Jensen Huang Professor of Global Leadership, Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Applied Physics at Stanford. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics. Her awards include the R.W. Wood Prize from Optica, Zeiss Award, Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, Geoffrey Frew Fellowship from the Australian Academy of Sciences, the IET A. F. Harvey Engineering Research Prize, Mildred Dresselhaus Lectureship from MIT, and the Humboldt Prize. She is a Fellow of the APS, Optica, and IEEE, a lead editor of Physical Review Applied, and an Editor of PNAS.

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  TIME Tuesday, May 19, 2026 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

  LOCATION L440, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Amani Walker    amani.walker@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

• May

  20

  ECE Seminar: Dawsen Hwang

  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

  10:00 AM L440, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  JJoin us for our weekly Electrical and Computer Engineering Speaker Series, where innovation meets insight. Each week, we host a distinguished speaker from academia, industry, or research who will share cutting-edge developments, emerging trends, and real-world applications shaping the future of ECE.

  From advances in artificial intelligence and embedded systems to breakthroughs in communications, power systems, and beyond, these talks are designed to spark curiosity, inspire new ideas, and connect our community with leaders in the field.

  Whether you're a student, researcher, or simply passionate about technology, this series offers a valuable opportunity to learn, ask questions, and engage with exciting work at the forefront of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

  Stay tuned for weekly updates on upcoming topics and speakers!

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  TIME Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

  LOCATION L440, Technological Institute    map it

  ADD TO CALENDAR

  CONTACT Amani Walker    amani.walker@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

• Jun

  3

  ECE Seminar: Gil Zussman

  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

  10:00 AM L440, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  Join us for our weekly Electrical and Computer Engineering Speaker Series, where innovation meets insight. Each week, we host a distinguished speaker from academia, industry, or research who will share cutting-edge developments, emerging trends, and real-world applications shaping the future of ECE.

  From advances in artificial intelligence and embedded systems to breakthroughs in communications, power systems, and beyond, these talks are designed to spark curiosity, inspire new ideas, and connect our community with leaders in the field.

  Whether you're a student, researcher, or simply passionate about technology, this series offers a valuable opportunity to learn, ask questions, and engage with exciting work at the forefront of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

  Stay tuned for weekly updates on upcoming topics and speakers!

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  TIME Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

  LOCATION L440, Technological Institute    map it

  ADD TO CALENDAR

  CONTACT Amani Walker    amani.walker@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)