Savannah’s research is focused on the development of novel device technologies in next-generation material families like wide bandgap and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors. She is interested in harnessing the exciting capabilities of these emerging materials to fill the growing demand for reliable micro/nanoelectronic sensors and systems that can operate without the need for bulky and expensive thermal management. She is focused on pushing device operation beyond the limits of conventional silicon electronics by investigating innovative device architectures and deploying them into systems. Critical new frontiers that can benefit from such advancements include robotic planetary exploration, environmental monitoring, hypersonic aircrafts, and quantum computing.
Savannah is passionate about her current work with NASA collaborators addressing the need for uncooled electronics that can operate on the hostile surface of Venus. Historical and proposed missions to Venus have been limited in scope and duration by the lack of robust microelectronics. Traditional semiconductor technology cannot survive on Venus without active cooling, which is not sustainable due to scalding surface temperatures >465 °C. To address this technology gap and enable extended duration Venus exploration, Savannah has demonstrated the use of wide bandgap device technology including sensors, MEMS resonators, and transistors. She is the recipient of an IEEE Aerospace Best Paper Award for this research.
Prior to joining the EE Department at Columbia, Savannah received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University in 2017, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2020 and 2023, respectively. During graduate school, Savannah was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Future Technical Leaders Fellowship of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Power Optimization of Electro-Thermal Systems. Most recently, Savannah was a postdoctoral scholar in the Extreme Environment Microsystems Laboratory in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University.
