Covi group

About us

The Cognitive Systems (CoSy) Group main research interests rely at the intersection of emerging memory devices, circuit design, and brain-inspired computing. We use design-technology co-optimisation (DTCO) of emerging memory devices and CMOS circuits to enable seamless integration and to exploit the strengths of both technologies. More specifically, we focus on extending the functionality of CMOS circuits by leveraging the intrinsic physical characteristics of emerging memory devices to design advanced cognitive systems. The group was established on January 1st, 2024 by Dr. Erika Covi as part of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center (CogniGron) and the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen.

Research topic

The group's main research focuses on the design of advanced cognitive systems. We work on bridging emerging memory systems and traditional semiconductor circuits to build new neuromorphic-memory systems. In this context, we can distinguish three different lines of research ranging from devices and circuits to learning systems that take into account the underlying hardware.

1. Modelling and characterisation of emerging memory devices (ReRAM, FeCap).

2. Design of neuromorphic circuits and systems.

3. Hardware aware learning with emerging memory-based systems.

People

External MSc

• Egidio Angelo Gallicchio, Politecnico di Torino (IT)

Alumni

Bachelor, Small Research Project, and master students

• Pedro Ortiz Costa [Small Research Project]

• Martin Nicholson [Bachelor Research Project]
• Jorge Navarro Quijada [Master student, TU Dresden, DE] 
• Aradhana Dube [Master student, TU Desden, DE]

Teaching

• Digital signal processing.
• Principle of measurement systems.

Publications

• Fehlings, L., Ali, M. H., Gibertini, P., Gallicchio, E. A., Ganguly, U., Deshpande, V., & Covi, E. (2024, October). Heracles: A HfO2 Ferroelectric Capacitor Compact Model for Efficient Circuit Simulations. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.07791.

• Gibertini, P., Fehlings, L., Mikolajick, T., Chicca, E., Kappel, D., & Covi, E. (2024, May). Coincidence Detection with an Analog Spiking Neuron Exploiting Ferroelectric Polarization. In 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

• Gibertini, P., Fehlings, L., Lancaster, S., Duong, Q. T., Mikolajick, T., Dubourdieu, C., ... & Deshpande, V. (2022, October). A Ferroelectric Tunnel Junction-based Integrate-and-Fire Neuron. In 2022 29th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

Address

Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials
University of Groningen
Bio-inspired Circuits and Systems

Nijenborgh 3
NL-9747AG Groningen
The Netherlands