Innovation Campus professor receives Meta research grant

research 2:05 Innovation Campus professor receives Meta research grant

By:

Craig Newcomb

4 Apr 2025 66

Yang “Cindy” Yi has received a grant from Meta Research Lab to work on hardware for their augmented reality (AR) glasses. Yi and her students aim to push the boundaries of high-speed, low-power optoelectronic systems, with a focus on advancing Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs), Trans-impedance Amplifiers (TIAs), Mixers, and Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs). The goal is to make these components function better, while using very little power, in converting eye movement data into electrical signals in future AR glasses.

It is our great pleasure to collaborate with Meta research to develop high performance, low power consumption analog circuits to be embedded to the future product in the Meta AR VR glasses. So here we have our test bench for the chip that we fabricated. It's for reservoir computing neuromorphic computing chips. So the chip itself, if you can see these really miniscule squares here, that's what it is, and it's packaged inside here in the center of the board. And then we have the whole entire test bench that interfaces with the tiny, tiny chip here. Currently, we have five students working on that project, so students are working on circuit schematic design for different components. I'm very excited for building the relationship and connections with Meta research. I hope this could be a long term collaborations. We can learn from Meta research for their advanced products and advanced algorithms, and also we can share our contributions to the future products in Meta research. My students are all very excited about collaborations with industrial companies. In this way, they can know the practical problems. Also, they can explore internship and full time positions with the companies. That would be a great opportunities for both the industrial companies and Virginia Tech.