Heat generation and removal thereof is one of the main challenges for the realization of many future high performance electronics. The heat wall is one of the biggest obstacles to processing large amount of data using the conventional computing architectures. To address this formidable challenge, smart architectural approaches that consider co-design of electronics and thermal management, as well as emerging solutions beyond CMOS, are needed. A resistive switching memory cell ReRAM is a promising candidate for such a technology, which offers performance improvements in digital circuits without a need for aggressive device scaling when combined with transistors. Ultimately, the solution may come from monolithic integration of novel electronics and cooling within the same substrate. In-chip cooling has been recently demonstrated to be promising in GaN power electronics on silicon. However, the multi-step and complicated process flow adopted for fabricating the in-chip heat sink in the state-of-the-art could pose a big challenge for the wide adoption of this new, scientifically and technologically interesting concept. 3D laser lithography is a currently unrealized opportunity to fabricate in-chip microchannels for cooling with substantially simplified fabrication and without a need for cleanroom facilities. Complex 3D structures can be fabricated by this method through a two-step process that includes femtosecond laser irradiation followed by wet chemical etching. In view of the above mentioned, we target to develop memristive arrays integrated with laser-micro-machined in-chip cooling. This offers an immediate and rapid path to overcome the thermal challenges facing today’s computing architectures, and is of relevance to other technologies that suffer from heating during operation. We seek to exploit the highly efficient embedded cooling to pioneer agenda setting advances in addressing the well-known thermal limitations of future logic and memory technologies.

Why is there a Volcker disinflation but no Bernanke re-inflation? It is not only because of the zero lower bound as a nascent literature is suggesting that monetary policy is more potent in a contractionary stance than in an expansionary stance away from the ZLB as well. But why? Why is it that central banks cut interest rates much faster than they raise them? Why does it seem like financial markets give much different responses to seemingly similar macroeconomic news at different times? Are these all related? This research project is about asymmetries in macroeconomics and finance. I will be working on these questions because our current understanding of these issues hints at some facets of asymmetries but is a long way from providing broad evidence and matching theories. I find these questions thoroughly interesting because the theory and empirical evidence we now have lets us ask the questions and understand their research and policy relevance but not yet satisfactorily answer them. Most of our macroeconomic models are linearized and linear models (with exceptions that effectively make the model piece-wise linear) do not generate asymmetric anything. But the issue is not in the solution method: nonlinear solutions of standard models also do not produce asymmetric responses in noticeable ways. Hence, although by experience we understand there are likely sizable asymmetries in macroeconomic and financial outcomes, we have neither extensively documented these nor understood what brings them about. This research program, then, will consist of five distinct but related questions: 1. Are there asymmetries due to the state of the business cycle and the nature of the shock? 2. Do financial markets behave as if market participants perceive the world to be asymmetric? 3. Do policymakers behave asymmetrically and if so why? 4. To the extent that there are asymmetries, what brings them about? 5. What kinds of policies should we be thinking of in a world with asymmetries?

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a globally disproportionate impact on the well-being of people living with dementia – particularly those who are community-dwelling – who have seen reduced access to healthcare and increased risk of loneliness, isolation, and depression. Consequently, the 'home' has become a vital space of care that remains lesser-researched in dementia studies. This can be richly explored in the country of Türkiye, which borders the West, East, and Global South, and has a distinctly blended modern and collectivistic outlook regarding familial ties and gender roles. Focusing on Türkiye’s capital city, Ankara, this project will explore the physical (natural, built, material, biophilic) and social (spousal, familial, communal) features of home environments, examining the relations between dementia, place-based experiences, daily living, and well-being. Inspired by integrated theories on relational and in-the-moment well-being, this project adopts a mixed methods case study design and asks the overarching research question: "How do everyday interactions with both physical and social features of home environments promote or hinder the health, well-being and identity of older women living with dementia?". This timely holistic project seeks to develop new scientific knowledge about the complex relations between, and intersectionality of, dementia, gender, landscapes, socio-economic status, familial dynamics, and daily living in the context of Türkiye. The research has strong interdisciplinary links across architecture, human geography, anthropology and gerontology, with exchange of knowledge between the candidate and host, Bilkent University's Interior Architecture and Environmental Design department. The findings coincide with UN and EU research plans, will fulfil an existing knowledge gap on people living with dementia in Turkish urban landscapes, and will lead to outputs on future dementia-friendly designs of urban-based apartments and housing.

Insertions and deletions represent perhaps the most challenging impairments exhibited by communication channels in a wide range of applications from recording systems and covert communications to DNA storage. While tremendous progress has been made in determining the ultimate limits of communication using information-theoretic tools as well as in designing and implementing signaling solutions for various channel models with practical significance; for the case of insertion/deletion channels, even the simple scenarios are not fully understood. For instance, we do even not know the capacity of the basic independent and identically distributed binary deletion channel. TRANCIDS will take on the monumental challenge of conquering the insertions and deletions by developing precise theoretical limits of communication and by designing explicit and implementable coding solutions approaching these limits. Specifically, TRANCIDS will 1) establish with precision the capacity of basic deletion/insertion channels, and obtain tight upper and lower bounds on the capacities of more sophisticated channel models encountered in practice (including the effects of noise and interference); 2) formulate and explore wireless communication problems with insertions and deletions (including multi-input and multi-output systems as well as different multi-user communications settings); 3) develop explicit and implementable channel coding solutions for a variety of channel models with insertions and deletions of practical importance; 4) address the channel capacity and code design problems for channels with additional impairments such as permutations as motivated by in-vivo DNA storage applications. TRANCIDS will highly impact different emerging applications such as DNA storage and beyond 5G wireless communications. Furthermore, the findings will help facilitate the development of DNA computing technologies of the future.

Lasers are ubiquitously used to cut, drill, mark, texture, 3D print materials. Material-processing lasers remain divided into CW, nanosecond- and ultrafast-pulsed, each excelling and falling short differently. CW lasers reach the highest powers, cost the least, and are far more common but cause heat damage, and their utility is material-specific. Ultrafast lasers achieve supreme precision on any material but remain niche as they are inefficient and expensive. Nanosecond lasers fall in between. We propose to overcome this categorisation by inventing a universal laser that can process any material, from metals to living tissue, exceed the efficiency limit of equilibrium thermodynamics, approach the quantum mechanical limit and surpass the speed of industrial CW lasers. It will do so by taking our invention of ablation-cooled laser-material removal (Nature 2016) to uncharted territory where electrons and atoms will be kept perpetually far from mutual equilibrium even between successive pulses. The same laser will perform 3D printing or tissue welding by switching to quasi-CW operation. To this end, we need the unprecedented combination of 30-fs pulses at 1-kW average power and on-the-fly tunable repetition rates of 0.1-1 THz. The latter implies an impossibly short laser cavity. The alternative is to support multiple pulses in the same cavity but this has long suffered from poor performance due to fundamental reasons. Regular modelocking generates ultrashort pulses by locking cavity modes via nonlinear feedback but it has no mechanism to mutually lock multiple pulses. We fill this conceptual gap by introducing a nonlinear time filter. This innovation underlies the new laser concept of second modelocking, which will create thousands of ultrafast pulses in perfect periodic arrangement to reach extreme repetition rates with a disruptive potential for not only material processing and laser surgery, but also microwave, THz generation, beyond-5G communications, laser ranging.