Principal Investigator

Ken Shepard
Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering
shepard@ee.columbia.edu  

PhD, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, 1992
MS, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, 1988
BSE, Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, 1987

Ken Shepard received the B. S. E. degree from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, in 1987 where he was valedictorian of his graduating class and received the Phi Beta Kappa prize for the highest academic standing. He went on to receive the M. S. and Ph. D. degrees in electrical engineering with a minor in physics from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1988 and 1992, respectively, on a fellowship from the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. His Ph. D. research, also funded by a special “Creativity in Engineering” grant from the National Science Foundation, focussed on the physics of nanoscale devices. He was awarded the Hertz Foundation doctoral thesis prize in 1992, given each year to the best Ph. D. thesis from among Hertz Fellows.

In 1992, he became a Research Staff Member in the VLSI Design Department at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY and was promoted to Manager in 1996. At IBM, he was responsible for the design methodology for IBM’s first high-performance microprocessors for the S/390 mainframe (Alliance project). This design methodology became the basis for subsequent microprocessor designs at IBM. He received IBM Research Division Awards in 1995 and 1997 for his contributions to the Alliance project team.

In 1997, he joined Columbia University, where he is now the Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, At the same time, he co-founded CadMOS Design Technology, an EDA start-up which pioneered PacifIC and CeltIC, the first tools for large-scale signal integrity analysis of digital integrated circuits. The success of these tools led Cadence to acquire CadMOS in 2001. In 2012, along with former Ph. D. Noah Sturcken, he founded Ferric, Inc. to commercialize CMOS-integrated magnetics for integrated power electronics.

Current research interests interests focus on bioelectronics, power electronics, and carbon electronics. Applications of CMOS to biology are focussed on problems in neuroscience, microbiology, and single-molecule diagnostics. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 1998, the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Columbia Engineering School in 1999, a Best Paper Award at the 2001 International Conference on Computer Design, best paper runner-up at the 2003 International Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits, and a winning entry in the 2003 ISLPED Low-Power Design Contest. We was given a Faculty Development Award in 2006 by the New York State Office of Science Technology and Academic Research. In 2008, he was named a finalist for the Blavatnik Award for young faculty by the New York Academy of Science.

Professor Shepard was program chair for the 2002 International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD) and general chair of the 2003 ICCD. He was program chair of ISQED 2002 and conference co-chair of ISQED 2003 and has served on the program committees of ISSCC, VLSI Symposium, DAC, ICCD, ICCAD, GLS-VLSI, ISQED, and Tau. He was Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on VLSI from 1998-2001 and Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits from 2004-2010. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Administrative Director

Keil Thomas
Administrative Director
kjt2120@columbia.edu  

Staff Associates

Andreas Hartel
Staff Associate
hartel@ee.columbia.edu  

Dr. rer. nat., Universitaet Wuerzburg, 2013
Dipl. Biol., Technische Universitaet Darmstadt 2007

Postdoctoral Research Associates

Jason Fabbri
Postdoctoral Research Associate
jf3229@columbia.edu  

M.S., Materials Science & Engineering, Stanford University, 2008
Ph.D., Materials Science & Engineering, Stanford University, 2012
Postdoc, University of California, San Francisco, 2012-2014

Bjoern Hellenkamp
Postdoctoral Research Associate
b.hellenkamp@columbia.edu  

B.S., Electrical Engineering, Osnabrueck University of Applied Sciences
M.S., Applied Physics, Munich University of Applied Sciences
PhD, Biophysics, Technical University of Munich

Taeju Lee
Postdoctoral Research Associate
tl3203@columbia.edu  
Heyu Yin
Postdoctoral Research Associate
hy2693@columbia.edu  

PhD Students

Berk Adim
Graduate Student
ba2674@columbia.edu  
Volkan Arslan
Graduate Student
va2403@columbia.edu  

I joined Bioelectronic Systems Lab as a PhD student in Fall 2019

I received my B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering with a minor in Physics from Sabanci University, Istanbul in 2019. During my undergraduate studies, I participated in a high speed SAR ADC design project under the supervision of Professor Yasar Gurbuz. In the summer of 2018, I was a participant in Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program in Purdue University, West Lafayette under the supervision of Professor Saeed Mohammadi.
My research interests include analog-mixed signal electronics and circuit design for biological systems.

Honors and Awards:
Merit Scholarship which covered tuition (100%) and housing expenses throughout my undergraduate education.
High Honor student in Sabanci University.

John Barth
Graduate Research Assistant
jtb2155@ee.columbia.edu  

B.S. Santa Clara University

Evan Battaglia
Graduate Student
e.battaglia@columbia.edu  
Jaebin Choi
Graduate Research Student
jaebin@ee.columbia.edu  
Brian DeHority
Graduate Student
bd2624@columbia.edu  
Siddhesh Atul Gandhi
Graduate Student
sg3877@columbia.edu  

B Tech, Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (2016)

Yatin Gilhotra
Graduate Student
yg2753@columbia.edu  
Jinwon Kim
Graduate Student
jk4537@columbia.edu  

Oregon State University
B.S., Electrical Engineering, June 2021

Scott Mitchell Kontak
Graduate Student
smk2247@columbia.edu  
Shiva Letchumanan
Graduate Student
jl5263@columbia.edu  

M.Eng., Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, 2018

Ronan McNally
Graduate Student
rm4064@columbia.edu  
Prashant Muthuraman
Graduate Student
Henry Overhauser
Graduate Student
henry.overhauser@columbia.edu  

B.S., Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, 2021

Boyan Penkov
Graduate Student
boyan@ee.columbia.edu  

B.S., Engineering Physics, Cornell University;
M.S.E.E., Electrical Engineering, University of Washington

Aditya Ramkumar
Graduate Student
ar4411@columbia.edu  
Alex Ranschaert
Graduate Student
anr2157@columbia.edu  
Kevin Renehan
Graduate Student
kr2743@columbia.edu  
Jeffrey Sherman
Graduate Research Assistant
jdsherman2245@columbia.edu  

B.S., Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology

Mor Shimshi
Graduate Student
mor.shimshi@columbia.edu  

University of Pittsburgh

B.S., Computer Engineering, 2020

Jian Teng Yan
Graduate Student
jy3350@columbia.edu   LinkedIn  
Sinan Yilmaz
Graduate Student
sy2943@columbia.edu  

B.Sc. Boğaziçi University
M.Sc. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne