Professor Shaloo Rakheja is an expert in physics-based modeling of nanoelectronic devices and technology-device-circuit co-design and co-optimization. She is particularly interested in understanding, predicting, and modeling physical phenomena in materials that drive their functional behavior and enable multifaceted applications in the domains of low-power logic and memory, sensing, brain-inspired computing, and wireless communication.
The models Rakheja creates are predictive in nature, provide guidance to experiments, reduce costs of test-structures, improve the turnaround and success rate of laboratory tests by preventing trial and error, and enable correct interpretation of experimental data. Her computational models also strengthen the innovation loop between materials scientists, device engineers, and circuit designers and eventually enable new functionalities in the next-generation sensing, memory, computing, and communication technologies.
From 2015 to mid-2019, Rakheja was an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University (NYU), where she established her independent research laboratory called “Quantum Nanoelectronics Laboratory.” Since joining UIUC in 2019, she has continued to grow in the area of physical modeling of electrical, thermal, and magnetic excitations in nanoscale devices. She has successfully used her models to enable a co-design framework wherein the different layers of the design hierarchy – materials, devices, and circuits – are simultaneously optimized for maximum system-level benefits.