Dr. Vinod Sangwan is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University (NU). He did a B. Tech. in Engineering Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai and a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Maryland College Park under the supervision of Profs. Ellen D. Williams and Michael S. Fuhrer where he received the Iskraut award for scoring highest in the Ph.D. qualifier examination. He did postdoctoral research at NU with Profs. Mark C. Hersam, Lincoln J. Lauhon, and Tobin J. Marks. His current research at NU intersects multiple disciplines including materials science, applied physics, electrical engineering, and chemistry. He leads and supervises projects ranging from materials growth to integrating high-performance scalable electronics and optoelectronics. Fundamental research themes are charge transport, defect dynamics, optical processes, heterojunctions, photonics, photovoltaics, and quantum information science.

Dr. Sangwan's current interest focuses on neuromorphic computing hardware, exploring tunable nanosystems to emulate bio-realistic neuronal networks and other energy-efficient computing primitives, as recognized by the 2021 IEEE Chicago Outstanding Senior Research and Development Award. He is pursuing edge-computing systems integrating artificial synapses and neurons using nanomaterial-based memristive and heterojunction devices with internal non-linear dynamical processes. He has published more than 100 papers (32 as a first co-author) in journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Materials, etc., has mentored more than three dozen students and postdoctoral researchers, and currently serves as a co-principal investigator in several government and industry-funded grants. He is a senior member of IEEE and an active member of several societies including APS, MRS, ACS, AVS, SPIE, and AAAS.