ESL alumnus earns Best Student Paper recognition from GOMACTech
The Government Microcircuit Applications & Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech) Steering Committee selected Matthew Belz, an alumnus of Ohio State’s ElectroScience Laboratory, as its Best Student Paper recipient from the organization’s 2019 conference.
The GOMACTech Conference is an annual event established primarily to review developments in microcircuit applications for government systems. Since its start in 1968, the conference has highlighted advances in systems being developed by the United States Department of Defense and other government agencies, as well as announce significant government microelectronics initiatives.
Belz submitted his poster paper entitled, “Optimal Component Selection for mm-Wave VCOs Using Evolutionary Algorithms.” The award-winning work was a component of Belz’s undergraduate research thesis with Ohio State’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Belz graduated from Ohio State with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in May 2019.
As a Buckeye, Belz was a member of Associate Professor Waleed Khalil’s Circuit Laboratory for Advanced Sensors and Systems (CLASS) team at ESL.
“This work would not have been possible without insight from other members of CLASS, and of course, my advisor, Dr. Khalil,” Belz said. “ESL and specifically CLASS allowed me to dive deeper into subjects than would have been covered in our undergraduate courses. I also benefited greatly from all of the graduate and research scientists who personally mentored me.
“I spent many hours with the CLASS team learning from my co-authors about traditional mm-Wave LC-VCO design, which I then built on to design an artificial intelligence algorithm.”
Michael Kines, Shahriar Rashid, Dale Shane Smith, and Khalil co-authored the winning paper.
The inspiration for the research drew from the growing distinction of automated circuit design.
“In recent years, automated circuit design has become more desirable due to increasing complexity with technology scaling,” Belz said. “In advanced technology nodes, the equations we learned that describe the transistor operation no longer closely align with the fabricated results.
“We aimed to use an automated approach to determine which designs would yield the best performance for a given technology,” Belz continued.
Belz and his team will be recognized for their achievement at GOMACTech 2020, scheduled for March 16-19 in San Diego, California.
Belz is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, where he is studying mixed-signal integrated circuit design. Before starting the Ph.D. program, Belz interned with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contributing to space research through integrated circuit design.
“For me, increasing our awareness about the world around us through space research is one of the most exciting areas, and integrated circuit design allows me to contribute a small piece of the puzzle,” Belz said.
