Latest Past Events

IEEE Canada Blockchain Forum 2025 (3rd edition)

Ontario Investment and Trade Centre, 250 Yonge Street, 35th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 2L7

Speaker Announcements - (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rameshramadoss/), Chair, IEEE Blockchain Technical Community, Author, Speaker - (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrmacdonald/), EY Global Lead Partner, Public Financial Management; Lead Partner, Government & Public Sector (Ontario) - (https://www.ece.utoronto.ca/people/veneris-a/), Professor at the University of Toronto - (https://www.linkedin.com/in/redwanmeslem/), Executive Director at the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) - To be announced, Kinexys Digital Payments at J.P. Morgan And researchers from the University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Waterloo, York University, as well as startup founders from (https://creativedestructionlab.com/streams/blockchain-web3/) (Web3 Stream in partnership with University of Toronto and HEC Montréal). Main Themes - Global Payments - CBDC vs Stablecoins - Cybersecurity Co-sponsored by: Exaion Speaker(s): Mark MacDonald, Ontario Investment and Trade Centre, 250 Yonge Street, 35th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 2L7

Distinguished Lecture Double Feature: Dr. Rabia Yazicigil and Dr. Alvin Loke

Room: SF2202, Bldg: Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Rd, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G4

SSCS Toronto is pleased to host two incredible speakers for a double feature distinguished lecture. The first speaker who will present from 3:00pm to 4:00pm is Dr. Rabia Yazicigil. Her talk is: Title: The Circuit Frontier: Innovating and Expanding ASIC Solutions for Enhanced Biosensing and Seamless Wireless Communication Abstract: This talk will introduce Cyber-Secure Biological Systems, leveraging living sensors constructed from engineered biological entities seamlessly integrated with solid-state circuits. This unique synergy harnesses the advantages of biology while incorporating the reliability and communication infrastructure of electronics, offering a unique solution to societal challenges in healthcare and environmental monitoring. In this talk, examples of Cyber-Secure Biological Systems, such as miniaturized ingestible bioelectronic capsules for gastrointestinal tract monitoring and hybrid microfluidic-bioelectronic systems for environmental monitoring, will be presented. Additionally, I will introduce a universal noise-centric data decoding approach using GRAND that facilitates ultra-low-energy wireless communications, a critical requirement for the success of these biological systems and numerous other applications. In this talk, I will delve into the intricacies of interdisciplinary approach for system design, spotlighting the potential of energy-efficient integrated circuits in the domains of biosensing and wireless communications. These collaborative research projects involve MIT BE/MechE, BU ECE/BME, and MIT RLE-Northeastern University. The second speaker who will present from 4:00pm to 5:00pm is Dr. Alvin Loke. His talk is: Title: The Road to Gate-All-Around CMOS Abstract: Despite the much debated end of Moore's Law, CMOS scaling still maintains economic relevance with 3nm finFET SoCs already in the marketplace for over a year and 2nm gate-all-around SoCs well into risk production. Modest feature size reduction and design/technology innovations co-optimized for primarily logic scaling continue to offer compelling node-to-node power, performance, area, and cost benefits. In this tutorial, we will start with a walk through memory lane, recounting a brief history of transistor evolution to motivate the migration from the planar MOSFET to the fully depleted FinFET. We will summarize the key process technology elements that have enabled the finFET CMOS nodes, highlighting the resulting device technology characteristics and challenges. This will set the context for motivating the introduction of the gate-all-around device architecture, namely nanoribbons or nanosheets, and unveiling the magic of how these devices are fabricated. Speaker(s): Rabia, Alvin Room: SF2202, Bldg: Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Rd, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G4

An End-to-End Approach to the Challenges in Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) and Packaging

Room: MC603, 6th floor, Bldg: McConnell Engineering building, 3480 rue University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 0C3, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/472834

Abstract : AIM Photonics, a Department of Defense (DoD) Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII), offers end-to-end services in photonic integrated circuits (PICs), interposers, heterogeneous integration (HI), electronic photonic design automation (EPDA), and packaging. AIM Photonics leverages the 300 mm Albany NanoTech Complex and the Test Assembly and Packaging (TAP) facility in Rochester, NY, to provide these state-of-the-art capabilities. As a DoD MII, AIM Photonics’ mission is to advance the photonics and packaging industries to help improve the U.S. ecosystem and build a skilled workforce. This talk will focus on how AIM Photonics is accomplishing its mission. To help advance the ecosystem, AIM Photonics offers interposer technologies and the two fundamental PIC technologies: Base Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) and SiN MPW, which are optimized for sensors. In addition to the current offerings, AIM Photonics will soon offer a Quantum Flex (QFlex) MPW optimized for quantum applications. Because of the challenges in photonic packaging, packaging PIC chips into functional optoelectronic systems has not fully incorporated the advances made in electronic packaging. Addressing these challenges will require a coordinated development of PIC fabrication processes and packaging technologies. An end-to-end development cycle that includes the PIC and packaging is critical. This talk will discuss the AIM Photonics ecosystem and provide specific examples to illustrate co-processing and co-design. Another challenge that AIM Photonics is addressing is the development of a skilled workforce. This talk will share an overview of our education and workforce development programs, which aim to build a qualified workforce to support the U.S. ecosystem. Co-sponsored by: McGill Optica Student Chapter Speaker(s): David Harame Agenda: 12 - 1:30 pm: networking lunch, with students (on-site only) 1:30 – 3 pm: technical seminar presentation (hybrid) Room: MC603, 6th floor, Bldg: McConnell Engineering building, 3480 rue University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 0C3, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/472834