NWO take-off grant for Tamalika Banerjee

Tamalika Banerjee received an NWO Take-off feasibility grant for her project ‘Brain-inspired integrated memory chips for energy-efficient computing‘. Take-off, the funding instrument available to all scientific fields, encourages activity and entrepreneurship within the Dutch knowledge institutions. For a feasibility study, researchers within Take-off can request financing of EUR 30,000 to a maximum of EUR 60,000. This subsidy can be used to perform a feasibility study of the commercial application of innovative ideas and the start of activity on the basis of knowledge innovations from knowledge institutions.

Training a high volume of power-hungry computing models required for Artificial Intelligence adoption, using existing von-Neumann architecture, is unsustainable. Taking inspiration from the human brain, our research group has demonstrated neuronal functionalities such as leaky-integrate-fire and oscillatory patterns , using memristors, device components for developing energy efficient non-von Neumann computing hardware. The goal with Take-off 1 is to develop a technology demonstrator and perform feasibility studies on a neuromorphic oscillatory neural network in collaboration with IMChip.

More information and all awarded take-off projects: https://www.nwo.nl/en/news/49-take-off-projects-awarded-in-spring-round-2025