OIP 2026 Program

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C. Thomas Gray received the B.S. degree in computer science and mathematics from Mississippi College, Clinton, MS and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. From 1993 to 1998, he was an Advisory Engineer with IBM, Research Triangle Park, NC working on transceiver design for communication systems. From 1998 to 2004, he was a Senior Staff Design Engineer with the Analog/Mixed Signal Design Group, Cadence Design Systems, working on SerDes system architecture. From 2004 to 2010, he was a Consultant Design Engineer with Artisan/ARM and Technical Lead of SerDes architecture and design. In 2010, he joined Nethra Imaging as a System Architect. His work experience includes digital signal processing design and CMOS implementation of DSP blocks as well as high-speed serial link communication systems, architectures, and implementation. In 2011, he joined NVIDIA, Inc., Durham, NC where he is currently Senior Director of Circuit Research leading activities related to high-speed electrical signaling, photonics, security circuits, low-energy and resilient memories, circuits for machine learning, variation-tolerant clocking, and power delivery.

Dr. Emily Kinser currently serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA E).  Her focus at ARPA-E is on sensors and semiconductor technologies, including 3D Integration and silicon photonics.

Dr. Kinser began her career at IBM where she worked in a number of roles, including as a semiconductor engineer, patent engineer, and research strategist; she has 69 patents to date and was named “IBM Master Inventor” in 2015.  Her personal research focused on nano-scale surface engineering for biomaterials and nanopatterned biosensors.  Prior to joining ARPA-E, Emily worked at 3M Corporate Research as the Director of the Inorganics, Ceramics, and Applied Physics Lab.  She is active in the materials professional societies ASM & TMS and was named ASM Fellow in 2023.

Dr. Kinser earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Materials Science & Engineering from Iowa State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Yale. 

Ram Huggahalli is a Principal Hardware Engineer in Microsoft’s Azure Hardware and Systems Infrastructure organization. As part of the Strategic Planning and Architecture function within this organization, he leads the Optical Technology Pathfinding team that is evaluating emerging optical technologies for AI and Cloud DC applications. Prior to this role, Ram was part of the Microsoft Cobalt processor team contributing to its I/O architecture. Ram also worked for Intel on many projects spanning memory, server networking and large scale HPC fabrics with contributions to Intel Xeon processors and Omni-Path Architecture. Ram holds 20 patents and a Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Engineering Management from the University of Missouri.