Apsel named to Technology Review’s top 100 young innovators for 2004

Technology Review magazine has named Alyssa Apsel, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University, one of the world’s 100 Top Young Innovators in 2004.

Apsel and the other 99 honorees—known as the TR100—were chosen by a panel of judges from a field of 650 final candidates under the age of 35 whose innovative work has transformed the nature of technology and business.

Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reports on the impact of emerging technology on business and society. The TR100 are profiled in the magazine’s October 2004 issue.

Apsel joined the Cornell faculty two years ago after earning her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and quickly was named to the Clare Boothe Luce Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Her field of research is optoelectronic interconnects for high-performance computing and analog VLSI (very large system integration). VLSI involves the placement of 100,000 to a million electronic components, such as complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors, on a single microchip—a thin rectangle of silicon or sapphire 1/16- to 5/8-inch square and 1/30-inch thick. These miniature collections of transistors provide the logical “thinking” capabilities that give modern computers their power. Apsel uses optical processing and communication to complement the computational power and ubiquity of standard electronic CMOS systems.

Optics has the potential to make chip-to-chip communication faster and cheaper. Explains Apsel, “The material costs of making electrical signals go from one chip to another within a computer at high speeds without power losses are becoming very, very high. With optics you get more bits transferred per unit power.”

Apsel notes, “I think what the judges picked up on was the idea of actually building a computer system that utilizes the benefits of both optics and electronics to achieve a much higher performance system. It’s something that has been hypothesized for decades, but very few have actually gone as far as to try to build one.”

“In the five years since we began naming the TR100, inclusion in the list has become one of the most prestigious awards for young innovators around the world,” says Technology Review executive editor David Rotman. “This year’s winners were chosen after rigorous selection and judging ... the result is an elite group whose visions will shape the future of technology.”

D. Tyler McQuade, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell, was also included in the 2004 list.

—Thomas Oberst
Cornell News Service