Principal Investigator

Assistant Professor; Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560012
Adjunct Faculty; International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems, Western Sydney University, Australia
Associated with the following research clusters at IISc:
Brain, Computation, and Data Research Group
Initiative on Quantum Technologies
Artificial Intelligence Group (AI@IISc)
Microelectronics & VLSI Design
Dr. Chetan Singh Thakur (Senior Member, IEEE) received his PhD in neuromorphic engineering at the MARCS Research Institute (Brain, Behaviour and Development), Western Sydney University in 2016 with Prof. André van Schaik. He then worked briefly as a research fellow for Defence Science and Technology, Australia. He completed his MTech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2007. Dr. Thakur worked as a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University with Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings and Prof. Ernst Niebur for a year before joining IISc as an Assistant Professor. In addition, Dr. Thakur has extensive industrial experience. He worked for 6 years with Texas Instruments Singapore as a senior Integrated Circuit Design Engineer, designing IPs for mobile processors. He has been trained by world leaders in the field of neuromorphic engineering, and his research expertise lies in neuromorphic computing, mixed-signal VLSI systems, computational neuroscience, probabilistic signal processing, and machine learning. His research interest is to understand the signal processing aspects of the brain and apply those to build novel intelligent systems. He is recipients of several awards such as Young Investigator Award from Pratiksha Trust, Early Career Research Award by Science and Engineering Research Board- India, Inspire Faculty Award by Department of Science and Technology- India.
Editorial board member : Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering (IOP Publishing)
Associate Editor: Frontiers in Neuroscience (Neuromorphic Section)
Post-Doctoral Researcher
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-s-c-g-kiruba-daniel-a50a8940/
PhD Students
Kundan Kumar is a Ph.D. student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. He received his M.E in Microelectronics from BITS Pilani University (Goa Campus) in 2016. Then he worked for a year at Thomson Reuters IP & Science division, Mumbai, which later became an independent company Clarivate Analytics. He is experienced in Prior Art Searches, Patent landscaping and analytics and has worked on various landscape projects in the domain of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, IOT and Automation. His research areas include Neuromorphic Computing, Analog IC Designs, Machine Learning and Game theory. He is also an avid traveler and a MOOC Enthusiast.
Prince Philip is PhD student in the Neuronics Lab. Prior to joining Neuronics Lab, he worked in the areas of analog/ digital integrated circuits in academia and industry. He taught UG level courses such as microelectronic circuits, analog and mixed signal IC design, control engineering and electrical circuits. In industry, he designed and developed OFDM based Transceiver Chip and several other circuits for wireless and biomedical applications. In addition, he worked as a consultant for a US based semiconductor company. He graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University. His interests are in neuromorphic engineering, theoretical neuroscience, analog IC design and signal processing
Abhishek Nair has Semiconductor industry experience of 5+ years in Intel and Qualcomm as hardware engineer, where he worked on implementation and validation of GPU and DSP architecture. He has done his masters in Embedded Systems from Manipal University. He has industry experience in computer architecture designs, validation and verification with expertise in GPU and DSP. He has hands on experience in C++, python along with kernel drivers. His research interests include new architecture designs with a view of performance and functional enhancement of Neuromorphic computing. High level synthesis and hardware implementation of novel architectures which includes Neural Networks and Deep learning.
Pratik Kumar is a PhD student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. He received his M.Tech in Microelectronics and VLSI from IIT Dhanbad. He has prior experience in the subthreshold and above threshold, analogue circuit design using current and voltage mode approach. He is familiar with programming languages such as Matlab, Python, Verilog, VHDL, Java, C++, Embedded C and Selenium. His research interests include hardware and software implementation of analogue/mixed mode neuromorphic systems for intelligent neural networks. His further interests include analogue/mixed-signal current mode subthreshold circuit design for ultra-low power based on new multi-order memory elements such as Memtranssitors, Memristors, Meminductors, Memcapacitors etc. and implementation of Deep learning, Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence in hardware. He has an industry experience of 2 Years in TCS. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratik92/ .
A. Lakshmi is a Ph.D. student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. She graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from University of Madras. In the early years of her career, she was working in the signal processing division of Naval Physical and oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), DRDO, Kochi. In NPOL, she has been working in array signal processing. Currently she is working as scientist in Intelligent Systems and Robotics Division (ISRD) in Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), DRDO. Her research interests include computer vision algorithms which includes image de-blurring, simultaneous localization and mapping, content based image and video retrieval, relevance feedback, pedestrian detection, object detection and anomaly detection.
Ankita Nandi is a Ph.D. student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. She has completed her B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Meghalaya in 2018. She was awarded the prestigious President’s Gold Medal and the Institute Gold Medal for her performance in B.Tech. in 2018. She continued to pursue her education from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar and received her M.Tech. degree in 2020. At IIT Gandhinagar, she was attached with the nanoDC lab, where she explored approximate computing for the design of low energy compute circuits for image processing applications. She is familiar with MATLAB, Verilog, and C languages. Her research enthusiasm lies in the design and implementation of low power circuits using analog, digital, or mixed-mode approaches for neuromorphic systems. Further, she takes a keen interest in low power circuit design techniques for in-memory computing, signal processing, and error correction codes. Her profile can be found on https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankita-nandi-603029191/.
Master Students
Rownick Pyne is a Mtech Research student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. He has received his B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University in 2013. Prior to joining IISc, he had worked as a Research Associate at IIT Delhi, working in the area of wideband matching network design and energy harvesting from ambient sources for wireless sensor nodes. He was also a Junior Research Fellow at IIT Kharagpur, working in the area of Compressed Sensing based fetal ECG monitoring for point-of-care applications. His research interests include Signal Processing, Machine Learning, Neuromorphic circuits and systems and Brain computer interfacing. He is currently working in the area of neuroelectronic hybrid systems.
I am currently pursuing MTech in Microelectronics And VLSI design. I did my B.E. in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. My field of interest includes Analog and Digital circuits.
Aayushi is currently pursuing M.tech at IISc bangalore in Microelectronics and VLSI and has completed Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur in 2019. She is working in Neuronics lab under the guidance of Dr.Chetan Singh.
I am katti pranay pursuing microelectronics and vlsi 2019-2021 from iisc.I completed my b.tech from jntu hyderabad in 2019.I am currently working on development of analog mixed-signal system for target localization for surveillance as my M.tech project.
Research Assistants
Shreyas K has completed his BE in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from SJEC, Mangalore. He is currently working under Dr Chetan Singh Thakur and Mr Haresh Dagale on system design for “Tiny Brain” an ultra-low-power FPGA based cognition machine. He has worked as a System Design Engineer with Fluxgen Engineering Technologies and was an active member of Terrorbull Robotics. He is an enthusiastic Maker who managed Make at CFAL, a makerspace in Mangalore. His interests include electronics design, product prototyping and creative design.
Alumni

Yeshwanth Ravi Theja
Research Assistant

Soumyajit Ray
Research Assistant

Lavanya Kumaran
Research Assistant

Arjun Verma
Research Assistant

Priyanka Palani
Research Intern

Sarthak Gupta
Mtech Student

Dheeraj Bhaskar
Mtech Student

Prakhar Jain
Mtech Student

Vishal Shaw
Mtech Student

Saurabh Gupta
Mtech Student

Ankit Tripathi
Mtech Research Student

Satrajit Chakraborty
Mtech Student

Alin Thomas Tharakan
Mtech Student

Raja Sharma
Mtech Student

Vipul Jain
Mtech Student

K.Bharath
Mtech Student

Siri G. V.
Research Intern

N.R. Neeraja
Research Assistant

Abhishek Moitra
Research Assistant

Akshaya A Mukundan
Mtech Student

Muhammed Hafees Hak
Mtech Student

Shilpa K.K
Mtech Student

Siddharth Chaudhary
Mtech Student