Kwak is a Ph.D. candidate in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is part of Professor Shimeng Yu’s Laboratory for Emerging Devices and Circuits. The primary objective of the research group is to challenge the intrinsic limitations of conventional 2D scaling in integrated circuits. They aim to achieve this by vertically stacking circuit components using emerging devices in 3D monolithic integration.

The award-winning paper, titled "A Reconfigurable Monolithic 3D Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converter with Back-End-Of-Line Oxide Channel Transistor," introduces a cutting-edge design that offers power-efficient and high-density switched-capacitor DC-DC converters. The novel converters are strategically placed on top of systolic arrays, facilitating fine-grain voltage scaling at the array level. The innovative architecture also minimizes the idle time of processing units by independently controlling the voltage for each array, all without incurring significant area overhead.

According to Kwak, the work in monolithic 3D integration offers exciting prospects for the future of computing. By conducting comprehensive studies of devices, circuits, and systems within 3D frameworks, the research provides a credible roadmap for extending Moore's Law — an advancement that is critically relevant as exponential growth in computational requirements like artificial intelligence models persist.

The work is supported by the Center for Heterogeneous Integration of Micro Electronic Systems (CHIMES), which operates under the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)’s Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0(JUMP 2.0), in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).