CSE co-authors’ paper recognized at Applied Superconductivity Conference

Researchers Jennifer Volk and assistant professor George Tzimpragos were awarded the Best Student Paper runner-up at the Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC) 2022. “Low-Cost Superconducting Fan-Out with Repurposed Josephson Junctions” develops an innovative approach to scaling superconductor electronics, ultimately introducing a method that produces fifteen to twenty percent savings and reduces current consumption without sacrificing robustness. 

Volk is a computer engineering student at University of California, Santa Barbara who currently holds a position as visiting scholar at U-M. Her work aims to exploit circuit- and device-level quirks in emerging technologies to benefit the architectures and systems we build with them. Using superconductor electronics as a case example, she focuses on building ties between these areas by defining electrical abstractions and designing scalable circuit components. In doing so, she firstly allows computer architects to make well-informed decisions without the need for analog circuit design know-how; and secondly enables circuit designers to have greater control over architectural metrics such as power consumption, area, delay, and robustness.

Tzimpragos received his PhD in computer science from UCSB and joined the faculty at U-M in Fall 2022. His research interests are in computer architecture, new models of computation, and computing with emerging devices.

The Applied Superconductivity Conference is the primary conference for researchers worldwide in the superconducting field, and covers topics ranging from superconductor electronics to materials, magnets, and large-scale applications. The student paper competition is curated by the Applied Superconductivity Educational Foundation, which is made up of leaders in the field.