Alyosha Molnar received a B.S. in engineering with highest honors from Swarthmore College in 1997. After working as a deckhand on a fishing boat, he joined Conexant Systems Inc in Newport Beach CA in 1998. At Conexant, he worked as a RFIC design engineer and co-led the design of their first generation direct conversion GSM transceiver, which has sold more than 20 million parts to date. He entered graduate school at UC Berkeley in 2001 and received his MSEE in 2003 for his design of an ultra-low power RF transceiver for "Smart Dust" working with Professor Kris Pister. He then joined Frank Werblin's neurobiology lab where he completed his doctoral work (still in electrical engineering), focusing on dissecting the neuronal circuitry of the rabbit retina using a combination of electrophysiology, pharmacology and anatomy. After receiving his Ph.D. in May 2007, Alyosha joined the ECE department at Cornell as an assistant professor. He was promoted to the rank of professor on November 1, 2022 and continues his interdisciplinary research in integrated circuits, imaging and neurobiology.
We have been developing integrated circuits (chips) in three general areas: ultraflexible radios, imaging and neurobiology. In Ultraflexible, software defined radios, we have introduced an new architecture of wireless receiver, using the properties of passive mixers. Both theoretical and experimental results so that this architecture provides receivers extremely good performance while providing unparalleled program-ability of its antenna interface. In imaging, we have developed a new class of pixel, in standard CMOS, and have demonstrated that arrays of these Angle Sensitive Pixels can be used to capture 3-D image information both in as parts of cameras, but also without a lens as ultra-low-cost imaging platforms suitable for simple biological and medical assays. We have also developed a new class of algorithms for solving basis pursuit problems that are especially applicable to lensless imaging. Finally, in neuroscience, we have been working with collaborators to develop better instrumentation for recording from and manipulating large numbers of interconnected neurons in tissue slice, as well as on a theoretical framework for interpreting these results and possibly applying them to new circuit topologies.
Teaching this year was split between ECE 2100 (Spring 2010, 2011), with an average of 60+ students. This is a lab class for sophomores. I made several adjustments, including adding a new lab (the "black box lab") which was especially effective in getting students engaged in thinking about circuits. In 2010, ECE2100 generated student reviews well above the college average. In the Fall I taught a graduate class (ECE5040) in "neural interfaces to ECE and BME students. I also acted as faculty director of 2010's CATALYST academy for promising high-school students from under-represented minorities. This involved designing and overseeing 6 week-long projects for groups of 6 students: at least one of these students has been admitted early decision to Cornell.
In the department, co-director of ECE's M.Eng. program, which has grown in both size and quality in the last two years. I have also participated in outreach and support efforts for underrepresented minorities, as part of CATALYST, as well as dinners with visiting URMs, etc.
Cornell researchers installed electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are 100 to 250 micrometers in size, so the tiny bots can walk autonomously without being externally controlled. Read more about Brains on board: Smart microrobots walk autonomously
Computer engineering researchers are starting to grapple with the implications of what has come to be seen as the end of, or the breaking of, Moore’s law. The observation that transistor density on an... Read more about Building the New Computer
Cornell Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Alyosha (Al) Molnar and several former students recently received the 2017 IEEE Sensors Journal Best Paper Award for their paper, “A Polar Symmetric CMOS Image Sensor for Rotation Invariant Measurement.” His co-authors include Sriram Sivaramakrishnan, Ph.D. ’15, Changhyuk Lee, Ph.D. ’14, Ben Johnson, Ph.D. ’14. Read more about Molnar and Alumni win Best Paper Award
