contributed by Giovanni Finocchio

Technical Committee 16 (TC-16) of IEEE Nanotechnological Council covers the area of interest in Quantum, Neuromorphic, and Unconventional Computing. This Committee was shaped in early 2021, and already received a formal approval from the IEEE NTC AdCom. TC-16 aims to serve as an interdisciplinary guide for scientists working in these three areas of advanced computing and to create a common language for them. In addition, TC-16 focuses on the role of nanotechnology, in terms of solutions, which can impact the developments of those computational paradigms.

TC-16 is chaired by Giovanni Finocchio, from the University of Messina (Italy), and includes other 11 scientists from all over the world: Supriyo Bandyopadhyay, from the Virginia Commonwealth University (USA); Kerem Camsari, University of California Santa Barbara (USA); Sorin Cotofana, Delft University of Technology (Netherlands); Yufei Ding, University of California Santa Barbara (USA); Kremena Makasheva, CNRS, LAPLACE (France); Moitreyee Mukherjee-Roy, IBM (USA); Amit Ranjan Trivedi, University of Illinois at Chicago (USA); Brajesh Kumar Kaushik, Indian Institute of Technology (India); Vito Puliafito, Politecnico di Bari (Italy); Guilherme P. Temporão, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Yao Zhu, A*STAR (Singapore).

The kick-off meeting of the newborn TC was organized on June 11th with the participation of more than 100 virtual attendees.

During the meeting, up-to-date presentations were given by five invited speakers. The first was Kosuke Tatsumura, of the Toshiba Corporation in Kawasaki (Japan), who presented “Autonomously-synchronizable multi-chip architecture for Ising machines based on simulated bifurcation”. Satoshi Sunada, from the Kanazawa University (Japan), talked about “Physical deep learning based on dynamical systems”. The third speaker was Hyunsoo Yang, from the University of Singapore, presenting “Spin based Neuromorphic and Unconventional Computing”. In the second part of the meeting, Rudy Wojtecki, of the IBM Almaden Research Center (USA), presented “Fabricating the Future of Computing — From Silicon to Superconductors”, and Jean Anne Incorvia, from the University of Texas at Austin, showed her results about “Designing Magnetic Synapses and Neurons with Application-Specific Functions”. The meeting also included the presentation of one of TC-16 members, Guilherme Temporão, from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), who presented a talk entitled “Quantum networks”. All the talks motivated interesting discussion among the speakers and the attendees, confirming both the validity of the virtual activities in this pandemic era and the great enthusiasm for the novel computational paradigms. The recorded talks can be found at the link https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzjVk-RTYvtpH1epaMx0jw/featured looking for the playlist of the TC-16 kick-off meeting.

The Committee has many currently ongoing activities, including guest editing a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology on Neuromorphic Computing, putting together teams of experts to write roadmap articles, and seeking to engage with IEEE Nanotechnology Council chapters worldwide to foster interest in this field.