Purdue University
Katherine Ngai Pesic & Silvaco Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Network for Computational Nanotechnology
Center for Predictive Materials and Devices
Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease
ABOUT ME
In 2009, I graduated to PhD with Professor Peter Vogl at the Technische Universität München (Garching, Germany) in theoretical semiconductor physics. Since 2010, I work in the Network of Computational Nanotechnology of Purdue University. This very interdisciplinary work triggered intense collaborations with electrical, material and mechanical engineers. My work embraces developing and implementing new algorithms in the framework of general quantum transport within the nonequilibrium Green’s function method. This work enters the multipurpose, multiscale nanodevice simulation tool NEMO5 which I am core developer of. Since 2011, I am mentoring typically about 10 PhD students in the modeling of charge, spin and heat quantum transport, transfer of density functional electron and phonon representations into mesoscale quantum transport models, and in the design optimizations of terahertz quantum cascade lasers and nitride based light emitting diodes. My work is applied to traditional 3D semiconductors, metals, topological insulators and 2D materials, such as graphene, phosphorene and transition metal dichalcogenides. My work involves close interactions with industrial collaborators such as Intel, Samsung, Lumileds, and TSMC with more than 100 phone meetings per year.
EDUCATION
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Nonequilibrium Green's function method
Widening the application space of the most general quantum transport method
Realistic charge, heat and spin transport in nanodevices
Treating coherent and incoherent physics on equal footing
High performance computing
Implementing computational models on large scale supercomputers and heterogeneous architectures
Expanding concepts of quantum models
Including but not limited to swarm robots, neuronal networks, nanobiology and nanochemistry
2003 - 2009
Technische Universität München, Germany
Ph.D. in Theoretical Semiconductor Physics
Focus: Nonequilibrium Green’s function method, incoherent scattering, electron and spin transport
Thesis Title: Quantum transport in semiconductor nanostructures
1998 - 2003
Technische Universität München, Germany
Diploma in General Physics
Focus: Analytical derivation of quantum corrections to the spin Boltzmann equation
Dissertation title: Spintransport im Halbleiter
(Spintransport in Semiconductors)