Sasikanth Manipatruni

Lore & Background

Manipatruni completed his schooling from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics from IIT Delhi in 2005, where he graduated with the institute silver medal. He also completed research under the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana at Indian Institute of Science, working at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and in optimal control at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with a minor in applied engineering physics from Cornell University, with thesis advisors Michal Lipson and Alexander Gaeta.

His PhD thesis focused on developing silicon photonics by progressively scaling the speed of electro-optic modulation from 1 GHz to 12.5 Gbit/s, 18 Gbit/s, and 50 Gbit/s on a single physical optical channel driven by a silicon photonic component. This work showed that silicon can be used as a material to turn light signals on and off, allowing high-quality engineering from the electronics industry to be adopted for photonics. In combination with Keren Bergman at Columbia University, micro-ring modulator research led to demonstrations including the first long-haul transmission using silicon microring modulators, first error-free transmission of microring-modulated BPSK, and first experimental bit-error-rate validation of 12.5-Gb/s silicon modulator enabling photonic networks-on-chip.

Manipatruni, Lipson, and collaborators at Intel projected a roadmap requiring the use of silicon micro-ring modulators to meet bandwidth and density needs of on-die communication links. While originally considered thermally unstable, by early 2020s micro-ring modulators received wide adoption for computing needs at Intel, Ayar Labs, Global Foundries, and varied optical interconnect usages.

Reader's Guide

Manipatruni's research has been covered by independent science outlets including Berkeley News, Physics World, Nature research communities, and The Register, as well as expert peer-reviewed research reviews in Nature and Reviews of Modern Physics. These describe MESO as a potential path beyond conventional transistor scaling. Physics World described MESO as 'combining topological materials and multiferroics to achieve ultra-low voltage logic switching,' and Berkeley News called it a 'breakthrough that could take computers beyond the semiconductor era.' A review by Nobel Laureate Albert Fert in Reviews of Modern Physics prominently discusses MESO and its impact, stating that 'MESO is expected to strongly reduce power consumption for computation by harnessing ferroic materials that have embedded non-volatility and by relying on a voltage rather than a current to switch the ferroic order parameter.' MESO has been reviewed as a higher energy efficiency logic technology in multiple secondary reviews and annual magnetism roadmaps, and has been investigated in multiple research and doctoral dissertation projects. His work has appeared in Nature, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and Physical Review Letters, and in publicly archived lectures of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Did You Know?

• Manipatruni is the lead author on Intel's 2018 Nature paper proposing MESO magneto-electric spin-orbit devices.
• He co-authored academic research with Nobel Laureate Albert Fert, whose review in Reviews of Modern Physics discusses MESO.
• His PhD thesis demonstrated scaling silicon electro-optic modulation from 1 GHz to 50 Gbit/s.
• He has co-authored ~400 patents cited about 10000 times.