Mark Alea

Mark Alea works on neuromorphic tactile sensor readout chips for electronic skins.

His interests include the design of ultra-low power voltage references, gate leakage-based analog circuits, and nanogap sensor readout design.

Mark Alea
Mark Alea
Phd student
Biomedical circuits and sensor interfaces
+32 16 32 04 17
mark.alea@esat.kuleuven.be
Georges Gielen
Or meet the full MICAS team

Career overview

Mark Daniel Alea received the B.S. degree in computer engineering and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines in 2014 and 2019, respectively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the MICAS group at  Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Belgium, where he works on neuromorphic high-density tactile sensor readouts for electronic skins under the supervision of Prof. Georges Gielen. 
He was an Analog IC Design Engineer with Analog Devices Philippines until 2020 where he worked on a nanogap sensor readout chip for biomedical applications. Previously, he was involved in the SmartWire project under the Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST) where he worked on ultra-low power voltage references with gate current cancellation. He joined KU Leuven in 2020.

Publications

A Fingertip-Mimicking 12×16 200μm-Resolution e-skin Taxel Readout Chip with per-Taxel Spiking Readout and Embedded Receptive Field Processing Mark Daniel Alea, Ali Safa, Flavio Giacomozzi, Andrea Adami, Leandro Lorenzelli, Inci Temel, and Georges Gielen · Conference Proceeding · Jul 24. 2023 2023 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits (VLSI Technology and Circuits); 2023; pp.
End-to-End Optimization of High-Density e-Skin Design: From Spiking Taxel Readout to Texture Classification Jiaqi Wang, Mark Daniel Alea, jonah Van Assche, and georges Gielen · Conference Proceeding · Jan 1. 2023 2023 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE); 2023; pp.
Power-Efficient and Accurate Texture Sensing Using Spiking Readouts for High-Density e-Skins Mark Daniel Alea, Ali Safa, Jonah Van Assche, and Georges Gielen · Conference Proceeding · Nov 16. 2022 2022 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS); 2022; pp. 359 - 363
Neuromorphic Near-Sensor Computing: From Event-Based Sensing to Edge Learning Ali Safa, Jonah Van Assche, Mark Daniel Alea, Francky Catthoor, and Georges GE Gielen · Article · Nov 1. 2022 IEEE Micro; 2022; Vol. 42; iss. 6; pp. 88 - 95
Analysis on the error contribution of various leakages to an ultra-low power voltage reference for WSNs Mark Daniel D Alea, John Richard E Hizon, and Louis P Alarcon · Conference Proceeding · Jan 1. 2016 2016 IEEE REGION 10 SYMPOSIUM (TENSYMP); 2016; pp. 293 - 298
A modified class of Seok ultra-low power voltage references for wireless sensor nodes Mark Daniel D Alea, Louis P Alarcon, and John Richard E Hizon · Conference Proceeding · Jan 1. 2015 TENCON 2015 - 2015 IEEE REGION 10 CONFERENCE; 2015; pp.
Developing an ARM-based Sensor Platform Mark Daniel D Alea, Lei Angelique I Azurin, Patrick Vincent F Bamba, Marlon C Maramba, Evoanne D Santos, Louis P Alarcon, John Richard E Hizon, and Christian Raymund K Roque · Conference Proceeding · Jan 1. 2013 2013 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF IEEE REGION 10 (TENCON); 2013; pp.

Awards & honors

[Best Paper Awardee] - Alea MD, Hizon JR, Alarcón L (2015) "A novel power-efficient HD3 cancellation for high linearity, pseudo-differential OTA." 8th ASEAN University Network/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Electrical and Electronics Engineering 

Teaching

·      2020-2021: Teaching Assistant to “P&D: Electronics and Chip Design”

·      2021-2022: Teaching Assistant to “P&D: Electronics and Chip Design”

·      2022-2023: Teaching Assistant to “P&D: Electronics and Chip Design”

·      2021-2022: Masters Thesis Mentor: Level-crossing Converter Design (Ruopeng Chen)

·      2021-2022: Masters Thesis Mentor: Electronic Skin Capacitive Readout (Jiaqi Wang)

·      2022-2023: Masters Internship Mentor: Electronic Skin Demonstrator (Run Wang; ETH Zurich)