Photonic neuromorphic computing is a rapidly evolving scientific field which attracts the interest worldwide due to its intrinsic scientific value and the niche applications it can enable. Bio-inspired computing can be performed in photonics with the use of pulsed lasers and complex waveguide structures achieving neuron-like behavior in unprecedented speeds and low consumption. The intrinsic parallelism of photonic circuits paves the wave for enhanced connectivity and scalability so as to solve complex problems at the speed of photons. RNCP members have a strong activity in the area as can be found in the publication record and in the participation in EU and national R&D projects.
Optical communication systems suffer from linear and nonlinear effects of the optical channel. Although modern ASICs can handle linear effects such as polarization mode dispersion and chromatic dispersion, the major limitation regarding the maximum capacity that can be achieved comes from the nonlinearities attributed to Kerr effect. RCNP investigates state of the art recursive neural networks and reservoir computing techniques so as to mitigate the nonlinear effects in long-haul WDM transmission systems. The same activity seeks for applying low complexity machine learning algorithms in short-area networks where consumption matters.
One of the key areas that MCP has invested is the envision-design and development of cryptographic devices based on electronic-photonics hardware for cyber-physical applications. In particular MCP has developed multiple designs of optical modules as non-replicable authentication tokens and secure pseudo-random generators able to be integrated in IoT ecosystems and solidifying their resilience against cyber-physical attacks. More importantly MCP is working towards combining its solid background on neuromoprhic engineering and crypto-systems, so as to spawn a new generation of electronic-photonic neuro-cryptographic devices able to offer a twofold advantage. On one hand, provide solid security features, such as data encryption and authentication, based on physical properties and secondly employ the same modules for anomaly detection and edge machine learning.
The use of fiber infrastructures for environmental sensing is attracting global interest due to the fact that optical fibers emerge as low cost and easily accessible platforms exhibiting a large terrestrial deployment. Moreover, optical fiber networks offer the unique advantage of providing observations of submarine areas, where the sparse existence of permanent seismic instrumentation due to cost and difficulties in deployment limits the availability of high-resolution subsea information on natural hazards in both time and space. The use of optical techniques that leverage pre-existing fiber infrastructure can efficiently provide higher resolution coverage and pave the way for the identification of the detailed structure of the Earth especially on seismogenic submarine faults. RNCP and co-workers from other institutions has developed a new fibre-optics sensing technique relying microwave frequency fibre interferometry (MFFI) which is a simple and low-cost proposition compared to the state-of-the-art solutions exploiting distributed acoustic sensing. The technique has been published in Nature Scientific Reports and attracts the interest of many geophysicists and seismologists around the globe.
PROMETHEUS’ vision: is to shatter the boundaries between quantum and neuromorphic photonic processing and merge them into a uniform integrated platform. In particular, the PROMETHEUS’ photonic integrated chip (PIC) will be based on a highly dense silicon on insulator (SOI) Field Programmable Photonic Gate Array (FPPGA) synaptic layer, strengthened by nearly-zero power-consuming non-volatile barium titanate (BTO) phase shifters and co-integrated III-V lasers, that will form an ultra-fast spiking neural layer.
NEuromorphic Reconfigurable Integrated photonic Circuits as artificial image processor
NEoteRIC’s primary objective is the generation of holistic photonic machine learning paradigms that will address demanding imaging applications in an unconventional approach providing paramount frame rate increase, classification performance enhancement and orders of magnitude lower power consumption.
NEuromorphic Processor Based on qUantum-Dot LAsers
Nebula Project is a research program funded by GSRT-ELIDEK (GR), hosted by the Dept. Informatics & Telecommunications of NKUA. It focuses on the design, optimisation and development of fully isomorphic to biological structures photonic neurons with ultra-fast response and marginal power consumption.
Next generation Optical communication systems in the O-band
HFRI Research Projects to Support Faculty Members & Researchers
Principal Investigator: Adonis Bogris | Host: UniWA | Collaborators: UoS, UoA
NOOK will focus its research on exploring O-band (1260-1360 nm) which offers extra 100 nm of optical bandwidth and has a clear potential for the generation of high quality devices, including optical amplifiers with the use of properly designed Bi-doped fibres.
ECSTATIC will design and develop novel interferometry and polarisation-based sensing technologies that substantially advance the state of the art in vibration and acoustic fibre-optic sensing techniques in terms of reach, sensitivity, and localization capabilities.
Quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs) operating at 1550 nm provide compact, high-performance, and scalable systems for creation, manipulation and detection of single photons. RNCP will undertake the installation of a quantum clock-synchronization testbed in Athens and the evaluation of QPIC devices as PUFs.
Wearable systems for the safety and wellbeing applied in security guards
Research-Create-Innovate 2nd Cycle, NSRF 2014-2020. The goal of the project is to develop systems and applications that will receive and process data from smart wearables to record biometric data for health, vital safety monitoring, positioning, and augmented reality incident management.
QUASAR’s vision is to explore disruptive paradigms such as neuromorphic computing and physical unclonable functions (PUF) and merge them into an implementation agnostic, cyber physical security ecosystem by exploiting fabrication-induced imperfections.
Adonis Bogris is a Professor at the Department of Informatics and Computer Engineering at the University of West Attica, Greece. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles published in international scientific journals and conference proceedings, and has participated in numerous EU and national research projects as a senior researcher or principal investigator. His research interests include high-speed optical transmission systems and networks, neuromorphic photonics, quantum photonics, physical layer security, and fibre-optics sensing. Dr. Bogris serves as an associate editor of IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology and is a Fellow member of Optica.
Assoc. Prof. Charis Mesaritakis acquired his diploma, M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has been awarded a postdoctoral EU Marie-Curie Fellowship at Thales III-V Labs (France), followed by competitive national research grants (HFRI NEBULA, QUASAR, PROMITHEAS). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UniWA, author/co-author of over 120 publications, and holder of three patents. His research focuses on neuromorphic photonic computing, neuro-cryptographic hardware, and quantum technologies. He serves as an associate editor in OPTICA’s Optics Continuum.
Stavros Deligiannidis holds a BSc in Physics, an MSc in Microelectronics and VLSI (NKUA), and a PhD in novel machine learning and digital signal processing techniques for optical communication systems from UniWA. His current research focuses on deep-learning equalizers, RNN and transformer models for optical transmission systems, VCSEL emulation, parallel computing, and microwave frequency fiber interferometry for geophysical sensing.
George Sarantoglou holds a Diploma in Electrical & Computer Engineering (Univ. of Patras) and a Ph.D. from the Univ. of the Aegean. His research focuses on reconfigurable silicon photonics, neuromorphic accelerators based on integrated meshes, extreme learning machines, all-optical activation functions, and photonic Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for hardware security.
Menelaos Skontranis holds a B.Sc. from the Hellenic Air Force Academy, an M.Sc. in Microelectronics (NKUA), and a Ph.D. from the Univ. of the Aegean. His research centers on Quantum Dot Lasers, VCSEL-based spiking photonic processors, reservoir computing, and event-based image flow cytometry processors.
Kostas Sozos received his B.S. in Physics (Univ. of Patras), M.Sc. in Microsystems & Nanodevices (NTUA), and Ph.D. from the University of West Attica. His research expertise spans photonic Kolmogorov-Arnold networks, recurrent optical spectrum slicing (ROSS) receivers, four-wave mixing unconventional computing, and high-speed optical equalization.
Georgios Aias Karydis holds a B.S. in Physics and an M.Sc. in Control Systems (NKUA). He is pursuing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Adonis Bogris. His research focuses on embedded systems, subsea per-span microwave frequency fiber interferometry for geophysical monitoring, and driving architectures for Photonic FPGAs within Horizon Europe projects.
Giorgos Moustakas received his Integrated Master in Computer Science & Engineering from UniWA in 2023 and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Adonis Bogris. His research interests include programmable optical spectrum shapers for CNN acceleration, adaptive recurrent spiking neural networks, and event-based neuromorphic imaging flow cytometry.
Nikos Tzeka holds an M.Eng. in Information & Communication Systems (Univ. of the Aegean). With substantial industry experience as an Embedded Systems Engineer, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering under Assoc. Prof. Charis Mesaritakis, focusing on quantum-secure photonic Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and neuromorphic photonic hardware.
Ioannis (Giannis) Tsilikas holds a Diploma in Applied Physics (NTUA) and completed his Ph.D. in ultrashort laser pulse interaction with biological matter, biophotonics, and photonic neuromorphic accelerators for event-based imaging flow cytometry.
Aris Tsirigotis holds a B.S. in Physics and an M.Sc. in Electronics (NKUA) and completed his Ph.D. at the University of the Aegean. His research centered on unconventional integrated photonic accelerators and reconfigurable meshes for high-throughput convolutional neural networks.
Dimitris Dermanis holds an integrated M.Sc. in Computer Science & Telecommunications (ICSD, Univ. of the Aegean). His research contributions focused on neuromorphic computing, hardware security, and pseudo-random generators based on photonic Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs).
Ag. Spyridonos, 122 43 Egaleo, Attica, Greece
Adonis Bogris: abogris@uniwa.gr | Charis Mesaritakis: cmesar@uniwa.gr