Ithaca College professor, research partners awarded federal grant for computer-power research

ITHACA, N.Y. — An Ithaca College professor and his research partners will use a nearly $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation as they search for “alternative methods to increase computing power.”

Matthew Sullivan, a physics professor at Ithaca College, and his research partners will benefit from a grant of $196,000 for their work. The project will also involve undergraduate students at Ithaca College and SUNY Brockport.

As technology has advanced over the last five decades, the number of transistors on a silicon computer chip has “nearly doubled every two years” and that trend “can’t continue forever,” Sullivan said in an Ithaca College news release. Sullivan cites quantum physics when he added that “you can’t keep making things smaller indefinitely — there’s a size limit.”

“Increasing computer power, it’s going to fail soon, and that’s why people are looking to other ways to improve computer circuits,” Sullivan said. “That’s why people started to try and mimic how the brain works, because the brain is a far more powerful computing engine than almost anything we have on earth.”

The research

Sullivan and his team will be studying thin films of niobium oxide for use in neuromorphic circuits, which seek to replicate the functioning of the brain. The project’s goal is to develop niobium-oxide-based electronic components that can seamlessly integrate with current silicon-based electronics.

Sullivan plans to study the electrical characterization of niobium oxide and how it behaves electronically.

“If we do this right and our researchers are successful, we will actually increase computing power and the number of calculations per second while at the same time reducing electrical-power consumption,” Sullivan said.

He says they’re looking for a switching behavior in these materials that would mimic the behavior of neurons switching on and off in your brain.

The research project includes a team from Ithaca College and SUNY Brockport, as well as collaborators from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Part of the money from the grant will help pay to send students to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to see how these materials are made and to bring some back to Ithaca College. Once in Ithaca, students will use the Cornell Nanofabrication Science and Technology Facility — a clean room — to turn the films into electrical devices for measurement at Ithaca College.

Sullivan says he is “always looking to provide students with hands-on research experiences.”

“That’s why I wanted to leave Intel and come to Ithaca College to teach, so I could provide these opportunities to students,” he added. “The most important thing about the grant to me is the fact that I’ll be able to fund student salaries over the summer and send students to conferences.”

The grant funding will also support the expansion of current local outreach programs, where Ithaca College students present scientific demonstrations and activities to local schools. Lastly, the grant will help generate new YouTube videos on the Ithaca College Physics YouTube channel.

Sullivan this summer will start his research by figuring out how to turn the niobium-oxide films into the electrical devices he needs to measure them, Ithaca College said.