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Adam McCaughan (Fed)

Adam McCaughan is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO, working on single-photon detector technologies, superconducting nanoelectronics, and neuromorphic hardware analysis.  He received his PhD from MIT for his study of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors.  He was recently named a Nancy Grace Roman Technology fellow by NASA for his work on single-photon detector arrays.

Awards

NASA Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship - 2019
NRC Postdoctoral Research Associateship - 2016
MIT EECS Jin Au Kong Outstanding Thesis Award - 2016
NSF Fellowship - 2013
NSF IQuISE Graduate Research Fellowship - 2010

Publications

All optical operation of a superconducting photonic interface

Author(s)
Frederik Thiele, Thomas Hummel, Adam McCaughan, Julian Brockmeier, Maximilian Protte, Victor Quiring, Sebastian Lengeling, Christof Eigner, Christine Silberhorn, Tim Bartley
Advanced electro-optic processing combines electrical control with optical modulation and detection. For quan-tum photonic applications these processes need to

Photonic Online Learning: A Perspective

Author(s)
Sonia Buckley, Alexander Tait, Adam McCaughan, Bhavin Shastri
Neuromorphic systems promise to solve certain problems faster and with higher energy efficiency than traditional computing, by using the physics of the devices

Demonstration of Superconducting Optoelectronic Single-Photon Synapses

Author(s)
Saeed Khan, Bryce Primavera, Jeff Chiles, Adam McCaughan, Sonia Buckley, Alexander Tait, Adriana Lita, John Biesecker, Anna Fox, David Olaya, Richard Mirin, Sae Woo Nam, Jeff Shainline
Superconducting optoelectronic hardware is being explored as a path towards artificial spiking neural networks with unprecedented scales of complexity and

Patents (2018-Present)

JOSEPHSON JUNCTION CIRCUITS FOR SINGLE-PHOTON OPTOELECTRONIC NEURONS AND SYNAPSES

NIST Inventors
Jeff Shainline , Adam McCaughan , Sae Woo Nam and Manuel Castellanos Beltran
Single-photon optoelectronic neurons convert the optical signals of single photons to the electrical domain where summing and thresholding operations are performed. In these circuits, the photonic signals are converted to an electronic signal using a superconducting single-photon detector in
Line drawing of the thermal impedance amplifier

Thermal Impedance Amplifier

NIST Inventors
Adam McCaughan , Varun Verma , Sonia Buckley and Sae Woo Nam
A thermal impedance amplifier includes: a resistive layer including: a resistance member; a first electrode in electrical communication with the resistance member; and a second electrode in electrical communication with the resistance member; a switch layer opposing the resistive layer and including
Created June 19, 2018, Updated December 8, 2022