Vivek Goyal, CISE Affiliate Faculty, Receives Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
Photo by Cydney Scott
Vivek Goyal, Professor (ECE), Associate Chair of Doctoral Programs for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Faculty Affiliate for the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) and the Hariri Institute for Computing, has published more than 200 papers, co-authored a textbook, has more than 20 issued patents, and has taught at Boston University for nine years. His scholarship focuses on signal processing, with a recent emphasis on computational imaging including introducing computational methods in electron microscopy. Recognized for his innovative scholarship, Goyal was honored with a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship for his proposed research project, Nanoscale Metrology Through Vector-Valued Secondary Electron Yield Estimation.
The Guggenheim Fellowship is an esteemed grant awarded to individuals who have demonstrated “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship” and potential for future achievement. While he is fairly new to his current research focus of particle beam microscopy, Goyal attributes receiving the award to people who believe in his “track record of creativity” and desire to work on high-potential and high-risk projects. Further, he perceives the award as an encouragement to keep down his path of researching “revolutionary” ideas in the field of electron microscopy, a technique for obtaining high resolution images of biological and non-biological specimens.
Goyal’s research interests include optical computational imaging, the process of indirectly forming images from optical measurements using algorithms relying on a significant amount of computing. This caused Goyal to investigate optics, photonics, and atmospheric propagation–all far from his original background in data compression. However, “over this next year, I’m excited to learn a lot more about materials, because the kinds of imaging technologies that I’m trying to develop are especially relevant for material science,” he said.
Secondary electron microscopy, which he describes as a family of microscopy techniques that involve particles being incident on a sample and then electrons being emitted and detected from that sample, is a focal point of his proposed work as a Guggenheim Fellow. He hopes that this work will enable finer resolution for imaging by estimating a multi-dimensional vector at each scan location.
“In our five to seven-year period of working in secondary electron microscopy, [my team’s] focus was on improving the quality of images while not changing from the basic idea that when you scan the sample with a raster-scanned beam, at each position you’re trying to measure one scalar number,” Goyal said. “Part of what I’m proposing in this work is to try to estimate more than one scalar value at each pixel location.”
“I came specifically into electron microscopy because I saw that there are ways to make probabilistic models for the data that are based on physics, well-founded in that way, but are extremely under-exploited for any kind of imaging,” he said. “The particular kinds of discrete probabilistic models that can be developed for electron microscopy is what drew me into it.”
In terms of application, Goyal’s ideas will enable an even finer resolution in computational imaging. This could help with biological imaging, for example with viruses and cells, and in semiconductor manufacturing where this finer imaging will help characterize the quality or accuracy of the manufacturing process. This use of nanoscale imaging could be for routine quality control, as well as to better understand how certain manufacturing processes work.
Previously, Goyal’s academia focused on optical computational imaging; but, now he is learning more about material science as these kinds of imaging technologies he is trying to develop are especially relevant for the field. “I think a lot of what research is is coming up with creative ideas, and having the conviction to know which ones you want to pursue,” Goyal said. “I tend to be motivated by thinking about mathematical abstractions and trying to see ways that conventional wisdom does not recognize the amount of information that is present.”
Goyal relishes the opportunity to work with, mentor, and explore academia with students. The dedication and intellectual autonomy that comes with academic research has spurred his love of exploring non-mainstream ideas that take several years to validate and adequately demonstrate. With the Fellowship being a great source of support, Goyal will take a sabbatical this fall to work on further research with partners across the globe.
Guggenheim Fellowship
The Guggenheim Fellowship are grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 that have provided over $400 million to more than 19,000 fellows, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. Recipients represent 52 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields affiliated with 84 academic institutions. Projects range from timely issues such as “democracy and politics, identity, disability activism, machine learning, incarceration, climate change and community”. The Fellowships are intended for mid-career individuals demonstrating exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors.