Subir Ghosh (left) and Muhtasim Ul Karim Sadaf (right), two doctoral students, take photos with their Best Paper Awards. Credit: Courtesy of Subir Ghosh, Muhtasim Ul Karim Sadaf.
Engineering science and mathematics graduate students win best paper awards at device research conference
Aug 20, 2025
By Jocelyn Bilker
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Subir Ghosh and Muhtasim Ul Karim Sadaf, doctoral students in engineering science and mechanics in the Penn State College of Engineering, each received best paper awards at the 2025 Device Research Conference (DRC), which took place from June 22–25 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Recognized as one of the longest-running conferences in the field of device science and engineering, DRC has maintained an 80-year legacy of highlighting groundbreaking research in electronic and photonic devices. The students’ award-winning papers contribute to a broader effort to develop next-generation computing systems that are more energy-efficient, secure and biologically inspired.
Both students are advised by Saptarshi Das, Ackley Professor of Engineering Science, professor of engineering science and mechanics, of law, policy and engineering, and of electrical engineering, and are affiliated with Penn State’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Materials and the Materials Research Institute.
Ghosh was recognized for his paper, “A 2D CMOS One Instruction Computer.” Researchers from Penn State have made a super-simple computer that’s not made of silicon but of materials just one atom thick. These materials act like the on/off electronic switches in devices but they’re much thinner and more power efficient. They built a computer over a thousand of these tiny switches using an industry standard growth process, and the chip runs on tiny power and low voltage. It only performs one basic type of instruction; this is just a proof-of-concept showing what's possible from 2D materials, a new alternative to silicon.
Sadaf was honored for his paper, “Enabling SRAM Scaling with Monolithic 3D Integration of 2D FETs,” which addresses the stagnation of Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) scaling in modern semiconductor nodes. His work proposes and demonstrates the use of monolithic 3D integration of transistors made from 2D materials, specifically monolayer molybdenum disulfide, as a breakthrough solution. This approach offers a promising path to extend Moore’s Law, or continuing to increase memory performance and density (like SRAM) without needing to shrink transistors using traditional and expensive lithography methods, for memory technologies without requiring new lithography nodes.
Share this story:
