Post-doc position on development of materials and devices for memristive oscillators

The institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) opens a Post-Doc position for the development of materials and devices towards memristive oscillators, funded by the National project Analogue Computing with Dynamic Switching Memristor Oscillators: Theory, Devices and Applications (COSMO).

Project description. The overall objective of the COSMO project (January 27th, 2020 - July 26th, 2023) is to lay the foundations and to provide a small scale demonstration of a parallel and analogue computational architecture relying on the collective activation of interacting memristive oscillators.

Conventional computing, based on classical Von Neumann architectures, is now struggling with tasks like face recognition, real-time navigation control, object segmentation and depth perception. Such computational problems require a rethinking of the overall computing architecture that exploits emerging technologies for storage and memory. The memristor (memory + resistor), a two-terminal metal/insulator/metal device able to change its resistance upon electric stimulation, is one of the main proposed candidates to implement a parallel computing architecture mixing memory and computation. The highly nonlinear dynamics of a memristive device can be exploited to build nanoscale oscillators. In the approach of computing with physics, networks of interconnected and interacting oscillators can develop cooperative and collective dynamics, e.g. phase synchronization and other self-organizing spatio-temporal phenomena useful to alternative computing schemes overpassing the limits of conventional digital and Boolean computation.

The project gathers the competencies of 4 Italian partners in the fields of material science/device physics, dynamical systems and control theory.

CNR role in the project. Within the COSMO project, the group at CNR-IMM, Unit of Agrate Brianza (Italy) (www.mdm.imm.cnr.it) will set up the entire production chain from (i) the development of novel memristive device technologies; (ii) to the realization of compact oscillators combining memristive and conventional electronic components and (iii) up to the arrangement of small networks of oscillators. A call for a post- doc position is open under the scientific supervision of Dr. Stefano Brivio.

Position Description. Development of materials and devices towards memristive oscillators.

The position is for one year.

The candidate selection will be done through public contest. The advertisement is posted on the CNR web site. The planned starting dates for the position is in spring 2022, depending on candidate availability and required time for selection procedures.

More details on: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/736109