PhD grant in Applied Physics, Neuromorphic Photonics and Ising Machines

The Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences, Department Physics, is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant. 

More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains: 

Within the context of the Belgian funded EOS project “Photonic Ising machines” there is currently an open position at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) for a PhD student in the field of Neuromorphic Photonics and Ising machines. 

Description of research field
Three Belgium teams at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Ghent University (UGENT) have united their expertise to develop a new type of optical computing devices that can solve hard combinatorial problems. Such combinatorial problems are commonplace in our society, for instance in logistics, finance or pharmaceutical research. However, for many real-world applications, finding a solution requires high-performance computer clusters that consume large amounts of energy and run for a long time. Our project aims to create a radically new platform of analogue hardware accelerators, so-called Ising machines, that efficiently speed up these computationally difficult tasks in a way unlike any current digital computer.
These Ising machines are a newly emerging computational concept and have shown great promise. They are based on the idea that the lowest energy state of a well-constructed dynamical system will encode the solution to the combinatorial problem. However, their implementation is highly challenging due to limited bandwidth, scalability and stability issues. A breakthrough is needed to make them practical for real-world applications. Photonics presents an ideal way to achieve this breakthrough due to its inherent parallelism and high speed. We aim to create accelerators for a broad set of problems, that are faster and more energy efficient than digital computer and previous experimental implementations. This work is both experimental, numerical and theoretical in nature.
You will be selected by the Applied Physics research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, but you will work in close collaboration between the different groups. You will carry out the PhD in “cotutelle”, i.e. you will be jointly supervised by two of the groups, will have to carry out part of their research at (at least) two institutions, and will receive a diploma from two institutions. This will ensure efficient flow of ideas, and put you in contact with all aspects of the project. You will be encouraged to work on several aspects of the present project (for instance a specific experimental implementation and the underlying theory thereof).

You will get the opportunity to:

• be supervised by an expert in the field;
• take charge of an exciting research project;
• research in close collaboration with partners from the EOS project
• participate in innovative training modules, including a series of hands-on workshops that provide technical, transferable and presentation skills, international conferences, and outreach activities.

For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.