ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING
Inhee Lee, PhD Assistant Professor Pitt Integrated Circuit Design Lab
Dr. Inhee lee received his BS and MS degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and a PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 2014. From 2015 to 2019, he was with the University of Michigan as an assistant research scientist. In 2019, he joined University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor. His research includes adaptive circuit/ system design, ultra-low-power power management circuits, and energyefficient sensor interface circuits. Also, he is developing millimeter-scale or even smaller sensing/computing systems for ecological, biomedical, energy exploration, and internet-ofthings applications.
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1128 Benedum Hall | 3700 O’Hara Street | Pittsburgh, PA 15261 P: 412-383-3152 inhee.lee@pitt.edu
Miniature systems have been actively researched to provide a new solution with unprecedented small size to the market. As a result, they have been recently reduced to millimeter or even smaller scale. The miniaturization creates a new computing class called the Smart Dust or the Internet-of-Tiny-Things (IoT2). The systems include unique feature sets such as flexible programing, wireless communication, and energy harvesting. In the next era, smart miniature systems will lead the electronic markets by opening new application areas as a result of their small size. Their tiny size enables non-invasive, secure placement. Such systems will have significant societal impact in industrial, security, infrastructure, biomedical, and ecological applications, among others. My long-term research goal is to lead the development of smart miniature systems. For millimeter-scale (or even smaller) systems, the maximum physical battery size and storage capacity are severely limited, which leads to a design challenge for the electronics. For example, the average system power should be limited to 2−200 nW to achieve a lifetime of several days to a month without energy harvesting. To successfully meet this energy limitation, since 2010, he has been instrumental in the development of a millimeter-scale IoT2 platform, which had been recognized as the world smallest computer until 2017. He designed low-power energy-efficient analog/mixed-signal and digital circuits that included a sensor/sensor interface, energy harvester/power management/battery voltage management, optical receiver, timer, and voltage/current reference. In addition, he developed a number of complete IoT2 systems for specific applications in ecological, industrial and biomedical studies. Moreover, by pushing the size limit, he contributed to the development of a sub-millimeter IoT2 system, which is currently the world smallest computer.
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
