October 2, 2025 ECE Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series Written By: Allyson Crowley Departments: Electrical & Computer Engineering Categories: Event|Research The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is proud to host the 2025-2026 ECE Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series, featuring leaders whose groundbreaking work is shaping the future of technology and society. This year’s series brings four renowned experts to campus to share their insights, research, and vision with students, faculty, and the broader community. ECE Department Events Professor Grace Xing, Cornell University,“AlN – a New Platform for Electronics” November 5, 2025 @ 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, 2305 Engineering Hall Grace Xing Abstract:AlN has been ardently pursued as one of the most promising ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors (UWBGs) after GaN and SiC as the industry has been expanding rapidly on the high-volume manufacturing of GaN and SiC based technologies, including 12-inch GaN-on-Si, 8-inch SiC substrates and processing foundries etc. AlN is CMOS compatible with high thermal conductivity, high acoustic velocity and a rich family of heterostructures. Recently, Sc-, B- and Y-doped AlN alloys have garnered tremendous interest for their ferroelectric behavior. In this talk, I will focus on findings in our journey to develop new electronic devices on AlN in the past two decades. Wurtzite III-nitrides are well known as a family of polar semiconductors. When sandwiching a narrow gap III-nitride layer with wider gap barrier materials, one interface is characterized as the negative polarization charge interface while the other as the positive polarization charge interface. The polarization charges are fixed in space and emanating electric field while the entire material stack will do everything it can to minimize its total free energy due to the thermodynamic driving force. As a result, compensating charges can be generated: either mobile charge carriers including delocalized electrons and holes, or charged defect states that are localized in the real and energy space. If undesired defect formation is sufficiently suppressed in the heterostructure, mobile charge carriers will be generated and can be harvested for electronic applications. To this end, we succeeded in generating both mobile electrons and holes in thin GaN quantum well sandwiched by AlN. I will discuss how we generate and detect these mobile charges, and some demonstrated utilities in terms of fundamental understanding and practical applications. Bio:Huili Grace Xing is currently the Director of SUPREME – a SRC JUMP2.0 research center, the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University, and has recently served as the Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Studies of the College of Engineering. She is a recipient of the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, ISCS Young Scientist Award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, and the SIA/SRC University Researcher Award. She is a fellow of APS, IEEE & AAAS. Xing received a B.S. in physics from Peking University, M.S. in Material Science from Lehigh University and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara, respectively. She was a faculty member with the University of Notre Dame from 2004 to 2014. Her research focuses on development of III-V nitrides, 2-D crystals, oxide semiconductors, recently also multiferroics & magnetic materials: growth, electronic and optoelectronic devices, especially the interplay between material properties and device development for high performance devices, including RF/THz devices, tunnel field effect transistors, power electronics, DUV emitters and memories. Together with her colleague Debdeep Jena, they were the first to demonstrate distributed polarization doping (DPD), especially the p-type DPD in nitride semiconductors. This doping scheme is fundamentally different from impurity doping and modulation doping, thus dubbed as the 3rd generation of doping science by Xing. Polarization doping is particularly powerful in polar ultrawide bandgap semiconductors since it might be the only known method to achieve both n-type and p-type in an UWBG semiconductor with doping properties akin to shallow impurity dopants. Xing has delivered 200+ invited talks and seminars, and has authored/co-authored 350+ journal papers including Nature journals, Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Electron Device Letters, and 140+ conference proceeding publications in IEDM, ISPSD etc. Her h-index is 89 on google scholar. Professor Zetian Mi, University of Michigan“Nanoscale and Polarization Engineering: Unlocking New Frontiers with III-Nitrides” November 19, 2025 @ 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, 2305 Engineering Hall Zetian Mi Abstract: Wide and ultrawide bandgap semiconductors offer unprecedented opportunities to address some of the most critical challenges we face in the next decades: energy efficiency, clean energy, environmental sustainability, and quantum information. In this talk, I will present some recent advances of nanoscale and polarization engineering of (ultra)wide bandgap III-nitride semiconductors and their emerging applications in next-generation microelectronics and photonics. By exploiting the strong excitonic effect in extreme quantum-confined nanostructures, conventional low-efficiency AlGaN can be turned into high-brightness deep-ultraviolet emitters, which offer the only alternative technology to replace mercury lamps for water purification/disinfection. The strong excitonic effect can be further exploited to achieve ultrahigh efficiency nano-LEDs to power future virtual/augmented reality. I will also discuss the recent discovery of ferroelectricity in III-nitride semiconductors, which leads to dramatically enhanced linear and nonlinear optical properties, piezoelectric response, and reconfigurability, that are urgently needed for integrated quantum photonics for information processing, acousto-electronics for 5G/6G technologies, memory-in-computing in harsh environments, and light-driven artificial photosynthesis for clean energy. Bio: Zetian Mi is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Pallab K. Bhattacharya Collegiate Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of semiconductor nanotechnology, optoelectronics, and photonics. He is a recipient of Optica’s Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award (2025), AVS NSTD Nanotechnology Recognition Award (2025), ISCS Quantum Devices Award (2024), Science and Engineering Award from W. M. Keck Foundation (2020), IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer Award (2021), and IEEE Nanotechnology Council Distinguished Lecturer Award (2020). At the University of Michigan, he received the David E. Liddle Research Excellence Award (2021), Rexford E. Hall Innovation Excellence Award (2024), and Wise-Najafi Prize for Engineering Excellence in the Miniature World (2025). He is a fellow of IEEE, APS, Optica, and SPIE. He is a co-founder of NS Nanotech Inc. and NX Fuels Inc. Professor Shiwen Mao, Auburn University “Diffusion-enabled 3D human pose tracking, data augmentation, completion, and acceleration” February 6, 2026 @ 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Location TBD Abstract: In recent years, 3D human activity recognition and tracking has become an important topic in human-computer interaction. To preserve the privacy of users, there is considerable interest in techniques without using a video camera. In this talk, Mao first presents RFID-Pose, a vision-assisted 3D human pose estimation system based on deep learning (DL). The performance of DL models depends on the availability of sufficient high-quality radio frequency (RF) data, which is more difficult and expensive to collect than other types of data. To overcome this obstacle, in the second part of this talk, he presents generative AI approaches to generate labeled synthetic RF data for multiple wireless sensing platforms, such as WiFi, RFID, and mmWave radar, including a conditional Recurrent Generative Adversarial Network (R-GAN) approach and diffusion/latent diffusion based approaches. Next, he proposes a novel framework that leverages latent diffusion transformers to synthesize high quality RF data, as well as a latent diffusion transformer with cross-attention conditioning to accurately infer missing joints in skeletal poses, completing full 25-joint configurations from partial (i.e., 12-joint) inputs utilizing received RF sensory data. Finally, he presents recent work TF-Diff, a novel training-free diffusion framework for cross-domain radio frequency (RF)-based human activity recognition (HAR) system, which enables effective adaptation with minimal target-domain data. Bio:Shiwen Mao is a Professor and Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and Director of the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center at Auburn University. Dr. Mao’s research interest includes wireless networks, multimedia communications, RF sensing and IoT, smart health, and smart grid. He is the editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, a member-at-large on the Board of Governors of IEEE Communications Society, and Vice President of Technical Activities of IEEE Council on Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID). He is a co-recipient of several technical and service awards from the IEEE. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. Professor Seth Ariel Tongay, Arizona State University“Pushing the Limits of 2D Janus Layers” March 6 @ 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Location TBD Seth Ariel Tongay Abstract:Named after the two faced Roman God Janus, 2D Janus layers contain two different atomic types on its top and bottom faces. Previous theoretical studies have shown that broken mirror symmetry together with large change transfer across the top and bottom face opens up completely new quantum properties including Rashba effect, colossal Janus field, dipolar excitons, and Skyrmion formation. Despite the theoretical advances in the field, experimental results are still limited due to limitations in high quality 2D Janus layer synthesis. In this talk, I will introduce recent discoveries made at Arizona State University towards different types of Janus layers. The growth process relies on Plasma enhanced low pressure chemical vapor deposition (PE-LPCVD). With this all room temperature technique, our team can synthesize different Janus layers as well as their vertical / lateral heterojunctions, and Janus nanoscrolls. Further studies from our team will introduce on-demand fabrication of 2D Janus layers with unique in-situ growth capabilities that allows us to collect spectroscopy data during the course of Janus material growth. Results are presented along with microscopy, spectroscopy, high – pressure studies, and electronic transport datasets for complete understanding of these systems. Bio:Professor Seth Ariel Tongay is an internationally recognized materials scientist and engineer whose research bridges fundamental discoveries and real-world manufacturing of next-generation semiconductors. He serves as one of the research directors of College of Engineering at Arizona State University, home to the largest engineering college in the United States.Prof. Tongay’s research focuses on lab-to-fab integration of emergent semiconductor materials, addressing key challenges in metal interconnects, stress liner technologies, and advanced device architectures such as FinFETs and gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. He is particularly known for his seminal contributions to two dimensional (2D) materials, including Janus semiconductors and the discovery of quasi-one- dimensional (quasi-1D) layered systems.He has published over 350 peer-reviewed papers and holds an h-index of 86, reflecting his high impact across materials science, nanotechnology, and semiconductor physics. His work has been recognized with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), NSF CAREER Award, and fellowships from the American Physical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Institute of Physics.Prof. Tongay is also an associate editor for Applied Physics Reviews (AIP) and npj 2D Materials and Applications (Nature). His research is supported by the CHIPS Act, NSF, DOE, ARO, and industry leaders including Intel and Applied Materials. Professor Shanhui Fan, Stanford University“Opportunities in nanophotonics” April 22, 2026 @ 3:00-4:00 PM, Location TBD Shanhui Fan Abstract:Nanophotonic structures, in which the feature sizes are comparable or even smaller than wavelength of light, enables numerous new opportunities for the control of the properties of light. In this talk, Fan will discuss some of their recent works in utilizing nanophotonic structures for creating novel states of light, and for potential applications in computing and energy technology. Bio:Shanhui Fan is the Joseph and Hon Mai Goodman Professor of the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He did his undergraduate study in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, and received his Ph. D in 1997 in theoretical condensed matter physics from MIT. His research interests are in nanophotonics. He has published over 750 refereed journal articles, given over 400 plenary/keynote/invited talks, and holds over 80 US patents. His recent awards include the R. W. Wood Prize from Optica, a Simons Investigator in Physics, and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He is a member of both the U. S. National Academy of Engineering and the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of APS, Optica, SPIE, and IEEE.