PhD candidate in Neuromorphic Computing, FPGA Design, and Hardware Acceleration

Are you excited about designing the next generation of energy-efficient AI hardware? Do you want to contribute to cutting-edge research at the intersection of neuromorphic computing, computer architecture, and hardware acceleration?

The University of Groningen is seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to join the international QuNeCo project, a collaborative research initiative between leading universities in the Netherlands and Japan. As part of an interdisciplinary team, you will develop novel neuromorphic computing architectures inspired by the human brain to enable future heterogeneous computing systems with unprecedented energy efficiency and performance.

This PhD position offers the opportunity to collaborate with internationally renowned researchers, publish in leading conferences and journals, and gain experience in architecture design, hardware implementation, FPGA prototyping, and AI applications.

We are looking for an enthusiastic researcher who enjoys solving challenging problems and working in an international research environment.

You should have:

•        A Master's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Embedded Systems, or a closely related field.
•        A strong background in computer architecture and digital hardware design.
•        Experience with hardware description languages such as Verilog, SystemVerilog, or VHDL.
•       Familiarity with FPGA development or RTL design methodologies.
•        Knowledge of computer architecture, hardware accelerators, AI hardware, or neuromorphic computing.
•        Programming experience in Python and/or C/C++.
•        Experience with EDA tools (e.g., Cadence, Synopsys, Vivado) is considered an advantage.
•        Interest in emerging memory technologies and computing-in-memory architectures is desirable.
•        Excellent English communication skills, both written and spoken.
•        Strong analytical abilities, creativity, and the motivation to conduct independent research while collaborating within an international team.

As a PhD candidate, you will contribute to the design and development of next-generation neuromorphic computing systems through algorithm–hardware co-design and computing-in-memory technologies. Your research will span the complete hardware design flow, from architectural exploration to hardware prototyping and experimental evaluation.

Project website: Home | QuNeCo

Your responsibilities include:

•        Designing novel neuromorphic computing architectures based on application requirements and heterogeneous computing use cases.
•        Investigating emerging memory technologies, including SRAM, RRAM, MRAM, and FeRAM, for efficient neuromorphic hardware implementations.
•        Developing RTL implementations of neuromorphic architectures using hardware description languages and validating their functionality through simulation.
•        Evaluating performance, energy efficiency, and scalability using industry-standard electronic design automation (EDA) tools.
•        Developing representative AI and neuromorphic applications to demonstrate the proposed architectures.
•        Prototyping hardware accelerators on FPGA platforms and integrating them into heterogeneous computing systems.
•        Performing comprehensive experimental evaluations and publishing research findings in leading international conferences and journals.
•        Collaborating closely with project partners in the Netherlands and Japan and participating in international project meetings, workshops, and research visits.
•        Contributing to teaching activities and supervising Bachelor's and Master's students where appropriate.

The successful candidate will join the Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen.

The research will be carried out in the Innovative Computer Architecture group. The group of Dr. Farhad Merchant conducts internationally recognized research on computing-in-memory architectures, neuromorphic computing, hardware security, and energy-efficient computer systems. The candidate will become part of the QuNeCo project, an ambitious collaboration between universities in the Netherlands and Japan that aims to develop next-generation heterogeneous computing platforms by combining emerging hardware technologies with novel computing paradigms.

The position provides extensive opportunities for international collaboration, research visits, interdisciplinary training, and interaction with leading academic researchers across the consortium.