Our Electrical Engineering and Electronics postgraduate body is one of the largest within the University and the department encompasses world-class fundamental and applied research. We wanted to give an insight into some of the research being carried out, so we spoke to Leonel Hernández, a 3rd year PhD Student. His research is related to high reliability electronics and his supervisor is Dr Saqib Khursheed.
Hi, my name is Leonel and I am originally from Mexico. I did Mechatronics as undergraduate at the National Autonomus University of Mexico (UNAM), I liked this a lot because it was a mix of Electronics, Software and Mechanics. From these three, I picked electronics for my Master's degree that I did at the University of Liverpool in 2016-2017. In 2018, I started my PhD on investigation of high reliability electronics, under the supervision of Dr. Saqib Khursheed from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics.
My research is about most recent electronics used in highly critical applications such as automotive and medical. In these three years of PhD, I have focused on CMOS technology (Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor). This work involves identification of stages in the lifetime of electronics that can be improved.
The guideline of my research is to improve resources utilisation according to standards and regulations, such as Energy Star, green ICT and IEEE 1680. The latter is for efficiency on computer equipment and innovation in environmental-friendly technologies to ensure sustainable growth. Green ICT emphasises on reducing e-waste and microelectronics community is working on reducing counterfeits, and especially recycled integrated circuits (ICs). My goal is to contribute to the development of a legal framework technique to reintroduce recycled ICs in the supply chain, thereby reducing e-waste and defeat illegal practices of recycling ICs.
The University of Liverpool is crucial in my research since it provides the environment for the Scientific community to discuss, test and prove our hypothesis. I interact with experienced researchers from the University of Liverpool and with other Academics around the world, I have been involved in projects with other Universities from UK, USA and Italy.
In the future I would like to continue with a Postdoctoral fellowship since there are many other things that interest me about electronics and more challenges are in the way with recent technologies. This involves new materials, nano-scale chips and more areas of application for electronics.
Find out more about the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics Postgraduate research -https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/electrical-engineering-and-electronics/study-with-us/postgraduate/postgraduate-research/