Mercator Fellows

DFG Mercator Fellowships enable intensive and long-term exchange with researchers in Germany and abroad. Fellows will partially be on site but will remain in contact with project participants even after their stay.

The TRR uses the Mercator Fellows as another source of input to its research from excellent German or international scientists. They will act as mentors to (selected) TRR PIs and support and guide in particular early career scientists of the TRR. Thus, they bring additional expertise to the project or into the network and increase its visibility. Fellows are integrated to a greater extent than visiting researchers.

• Associate Professor at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications of Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

Short Biography

Alon Ascoli (IEEE member) received a Ph.D. Degree in Electronic Engineering from University College Dublin in 2006. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as RFIC analog engineer at CSR Sweden AB. From 2009 to 2012 he was Research Assistant in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications at Politecnico di Torino.

Since 2018 he is Scientific Collaborator with the Department of Microelectronics, Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic. Since 2012 he is Scientific Collaborator in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technische Universität Dresden, where he is currently pursuing a Habilitation in Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering. His research interests lie in the area of nonlinear circuits and systems, networks of oscillators, Cellular Nonlinear Networks and memristors. Dr. Ascoli was honored with the International Journal of Circuit Theory and its Applications (IJCTA) 2007 Best Paper Award. He is the President of the Cellular Nanoscale Networks and Array Computing Technical Committee (CNNAC-TC) since May 2019. In April 2017 he was conferred the habilitation title as Associate Professor in Electrical Circuit Theory from the Italian Ministry of Education. Since 2014 he is Management Committee Substitute for Germany in then COST Action IC1401 MemoCIS “Memristors – Devices, Models, Circuits, Systems, and Applications”. He has been Program Chair and Special Session Chair for the 15th International Workshop on Cellular Nanoscale Networks and their Applications (CNNA) in 2016. He is the Technical Program Chair for the International Conference on Memristive Materials, Devices, and Systems (MEMRISYS) 2019.

Link to page at Politecnico di Torino

Link to page at Chua Memristor Center Dresden

• Full Professor in Electronics at The University of Sheffield
• Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE – Electron Devices Society

Maria Merlyne De Souza received her BSc (Physics and Maths from Uni. Mumbai), B.E (Electronics and Communications Engineering, IISc Bangalore) and PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1994. She became Professor of Electronics and Materials at the Emerging Technologies Research Centre, De Montfort University in 2003 and Professor of Microelectronics at the University of Sheffield in 2007. She has been a technical and executive committee member of IEEE- International Electron Devices Meeting between 2012-2017 and a technical committee member of the IEEEInternational Reliability Physics Symposium 2003-2013. She is current VP of Interdisciplinary Technical committees of the IEEE-EDS. She has published ~120 journal papers and 190 conferences.

Link to Chair page

Mercator Fellow Talks at TRR404

13 February 2026 - Scaling in Size, Stuck in Voltage: A CMOS Retrospective and Outlook