Professor Juan Bautista Roldán Aranda, from the Department of Electronics and computer technology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2025 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2025 call, please consult this link.

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With amost 54,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and more than 6,000 members of staff, the UGR offers over 90 undergraduate degrees, 157 master’s degrees (7 of which are international double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 124 departments and nearly 50 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the institution’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding. 

The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2024 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 301-400th position in the world and as the 3-8 highest ranked University in Spain (http://sl.ugr.es/0dwJ), reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings (http://sl.ugr.es/0bSp), the UGR is outstanding in Mathematics and Dentistry & Oral Sciences Food Science & Technology (both ranked between 51th-75th position), Computer Science & Engineering, Food Science & Technology and Hospitality & Tourism Management (all three ranked between 76-100th position), and in the areas of Statistics and Psychology (both ranked between 101-150th position). A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in the areas of Business Administration and Earth Sciences, in which the UGR is positioned in the 151-200th position.

Additionally, the UGR counts with 3 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list (http://sl.ugr.es/0cmD), most of them related to the Computer Science scientific area. It is also well recognised for its presence in the top 200 Universities in Europe (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i) at 43th place. 

Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the prevoius Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, the UGR obtained a total of 123 projects with a total funding of around €30 million. For the current Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, the UGR has obtained 108 projects, so far, with a total funding of €33 million.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

The members of our research group belong to the following departments at the University of Granada: Electronics and computer technology, Atomic, molecular and nuclear physics, Applied mathematics and Statistics. Therefore, we deal with research activities from a multidisciplinary viewpoint since our areas of expertise are complementary and allow to obtain many synergies. Among our research topics, the following can be counted: physical simulation and compact modeling for circuit simulation of electron devices, electron device experimental characterization, analysis and study of two-dimensional materials (graphene, silicene…) and devices built with them. In the last ten years we have focused on memristors of different materials (transition metal oxides, 2D materials, flexible materials…) and their applications for non-volatile memories, neuromorphic computing and hardware cryptography.

We have developed compact models for memristors accounting for their thermal and electrical properties, and designed parameter extraction techniques where different numerical algorithms have been implemented to analyze the measurements obtained in our lab and in our collaborator’s. The compact models have been coded with different techniques: Verilog AMS, Verilog-A, SPICE macromodels. 

We have also developed kinetic Monte Carlo simulators for memristors, as well as circuit-breakers based simulators and finite element simulation tools, in 2D and 3D. In addition, we performed DFT and molecular dynamics simulations with conventional software for this purpose. We have been funded by means of research projects by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, our regional government and the European Union authorities. 

Project description:

We will develop a detailed and physically-based simulator for the study of different types of resistive memories. The simulation tool will be based on finite element description in a 3D domain where the electric potential, the temperature, the charge and ionic current will be obtained self-consistently to describe the device resistive switching processes. The simulation tool, including a kinetic Monte Carlo kernel, will be employed to fit great number of experimental data from different devices fabricated by our partners. In particular, we will consider devices based on metal-insulator-metal and metal-insulator-semiconductor made of different transition metal oxides stacks. In addition, we will take into consideration resistive memories where two-dimensional materials are included. 

The simulation results will be used to describe the operation of these devices in applications for non-volatile circuits. Some of our simulation tools are explained in videos for scientific visualization:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksivb2vHtv4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0YacFensM4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLk4eJNc_Y8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoFF0svim6c&t=10s

The simulation tool will be tuned with measurements performed on different memristor technologies in our laboratory. 

Later on, a compact model will be developed in Verilog-A to incorporate in a circuit simulator. Finally, different circuits will be built to implement neural networks at hardware level. We will study different aspects of neuromorphic engineering with artificial neural networks and spiking neural networks based on memristors for AI acceleration.

Research Area:

• Information Science and Engineering (ENG)
• Physics (PHY)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Juan Bautista Roldán Aranda (jroldan@ugr.es): 

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)