Samantha Lubaba Noor has been named a fellow of the Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies (CRNCH). Noor is a third-year Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“My research highly aligns with the scope of the fellowship on novel computing paradigms,” Noor said. “It will also help me to reach a broader audience by presenting my work at the CRNCH Summit.”

During the fellowship period, she will work on plasmonic computing system. Surface plasmon is an electromagnetic wave that merges the miniaturization potential of electron and high-speed attributes of photon. Researchers can use surface plasmon to design logic devices and integrated circuits that offer high-speed and high throughput computation with low footprint requirement. Plasmonic computing systems can be used in signal and data-processing applications in high-end server systems.

Noor’s project focuses on the design and optimization of the building blocks of a plasmonic computing network. As part of the project, she will design the couplers between plasmonic metal-insulator-metal (MIM) and metal-semiconductor-metal waveguides.

She will also explore the material choice for plasmonic MIM waveguide-based devices to determine best material factoring in energy efficiency, footprint, and speed.

CRNCH launched the fellowship program in fall of 2020 to support innovative student research in post-Moore computing topics. The research center explores new computing paradigms after the end of Moore’s law.  Partnering with academics and industry, CRNCH researchers full-stack solutions on everything from quantum computing to approximate computation.