Overview
The field of VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) is concerned with the design, production, and use of highly complex integrated circuits. The revolution in communications and information technology has been fueled by less publicized advances in other areas. One of these is the ability to manufacture integrated circuits containing thousands of transistors with high reliability. OSU has active research in several types of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). These areas include: Mixed mode CMOS VLSI including analog, MEMS, VLSI computer architecture, and digital circuit and system design.

Research
As systems become smaller and smaller more capabilities are being put directly onto a wafer including the integration of analog and digital electronics. Moreover, existing designs require excessive design costs to achieve the power, area, and performance requirements of complex system-on-chip (SoC) solutions making current designs challenging and exciting. Oklahoma State University is a leader and innovator in VLSI design extending novel uses of the technology and concepts originally developed for integrated circuits, including integrated sensor arrays, digital photography, highly parallel computers, micro-actuators, neural networks, and a variety of special-purpose architectures and networks of special-purpose devices.

Courses

• Semiconductor Devices
• Digital Systems Testing
• RF/Microwave Circuit Design
• Digital VLSI Circuit Design
• CMOS Analog Integrated Circuit Design
• Analog VLSI for Signal Processing
• Microelectronic Fabrication
• System on Chip Architectures
• High Speed Computer Arithmetic
• Advanced High Speed Computer Arithmetic

Research Labs
VLSI Computer Architecture Research Group
Mixed Signal VLSI Design Group

Faculty
Dr. Reza Abdolvand received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 1999 and 2001 respectively. In 2002, he joined the Integrated MEMS group at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he received his Ph.D. in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2007). His research interests are in the areas of design and fabrication of resonant MEMS devices for sensors and RF applications, integrated microsystems and piezoelectric micromachining technologies. He is the author of more than 20 technical articles and three patents.

Dr. Louis G. Johnson's research interests include VLSI systems design, robotics, machine vision, computer architecture, computer-aided design and testing and digital electronics. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967, 1969 and 1973 respectively. In addition to his extensive research and teaching experience in academia at the University of Oregon, California State Polytechnic University and Oklahoma State University, he has worked in the industry with General Dynamics and Texas Instruments.

Dr. Chris Hutchens received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Engineering with an emphasis in Bioengineering from South Dakota State University in 1971 and 1972 respectively and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from the University of Missouri. He has over 10 years of clinical, industry and government laboratory experience in Biomedical Electronics and Mixed Signal VLSI (MSVLSI), and is among the nations first Certified Clinical Engineers. He is the recipient of multiple DOE and SPAWAR research awards in MSVLSI. Dr. Hutchens¡¯ MSVLSI research is focused in low power Analog and RF VLSI for all extreme environments.

Dr. James Stine received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Lehigh University in 2000. He was an assistant and associate professor at Illinois Institute of Technology from 1999 to 2005, where he directed the VLSI Computer Architecture, Arithmetic and CAD Research Laboratory. He is currently an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Stine specializes in research and teaching in VLSI, computer arithmetic, computer system architecture and digital design. His research contributions have been extensively published in journals and conference proceedings. He is the author of two monographs in the area of computer arithmetic. He is a member of the ACM, the IEEE Computer Society, Eta Kappa Nu and a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Dr. Daryoosh Vashaee joined OSU in 2007 after a postdoctoral research on nano energy materials at MIT. He received his Ph.D. on nanoscale charge and energy transport in electrical engineering from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2004. Prior to UCSC, he earned his BS and MS both in electrical engineering from Sharif and Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran in 1993 and 1995 respectively. After three years of experience working on RF Engineering, Daryoosh joined UC-Santa Barbara and worked on the fabrication and processing of thin film thermoelectric devices. His research interests are on theoretical and experimental investigation of energy materials and devices, nano and micro-scale charge and energy transport, thermoelectric/thermionic energy conversion, and integrated micro-refrigeration.