My name is Tom Twomey. I am a PhD student studying computer architecture at the University of Michigan. Below is a brief bio, a description of my research interests, some details on current and past projects, and my contact info.
Bio
Background
I did my undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech where I attained bachelor’s degrees in computer science and economics. While I was a student, I had the opportunity to do research with the SyNeRGy Lab under Dr. Feng looking into the productivity of FPGAs in HPC environments. After graduating, I spent a couple of years with the Montague Lab developing deep neural networks to gain insights into neurotransmitter dynamics in awake human brains.
Resume
You can find my resume here.
Research
I am advised by Ronald Dreslinski.
Research Interests
I am interested in power allocation and usage in computer chips, the networked systems of computer chips that make up datacenters, and their interaction with large power systems.
Power Markets in a Chip / Datacenter
When power becomes a constraint or a large portion of the total cost of ownership, we have to be clever about how it is allocated. I am looking at how local (at the chip or computer level) information can be used with established power market designs to improve the allocation of power over existing approaches.
Computer Chips as Grid Resources
As datacenters become a larger grid load and renewables expand supply, there is an opportunity to operate compute infrastructure as an active grid resource. I’m exploring how chip properties can provide grid services beyond peak shaving.
Current Projects
Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling-Enabled Virtual Inertia
In this project, I am exploring how manipulation of GPU (or other accelerator) frequency and voltage can be used to create virtual inertia services. Further, I aim to quantify the amount of virtual inertia that can be provided with minimal impact on service level objectives and the associated economic value.
Past Projects
Race Logic in Image Sensing
This project explored race logic applications in vision sensors. Race logic encodes values using signal transition times, replacing costly analog-to-digital converters with simpler analog-to-time converters. The resulting temporal signals enable low-power time-domain processing before converting reduced information to binary digital form. We explored hand-tuned feature extraction (edge detection, FAST) and ML-based approaches (local binary comparison networks, binarized activation networks).
Relevant Publication:
SEAL: A Single-Event Architecture for In-Sensor Visual Localization (ISCA 2025)
Deep Learning for Fast Scan Cyclic Voltammetry
I was part of a long-running project that measures neurotransmitter dynamics using probes in awake human participants during brain surgery. We used a technique called Fast Scan Cyclic Voltammetry (FSCV) that induces a specific voltage waveform and measures the resultant current. During my time on the project, I led development and testing of new machine learning architectures for the task as well as the use of existing models for inference on new experiments.
Relevant Publications:
Deep Learning Architectures for FSCV, a Comparison (Preprint 2022)
Noradrenaline tracks emotional modulation of attention in human amygdala (Current Biology 2023)
Dopamine and serotonin in human substantia nigra track social context and value signals during economic exchange (Nature Human Behaviour 2025)
Publications
A full list of my publications is available on my Google Scholar page.
Contact
You can reach me by email at ttwomey@umich.edu.
Also
I have been a board member for the Arlington Outdoor Education Association (AOEA) since 2023. The AOEA owns and maintains the Outdoor Lab, which serves as an outdoor education facility for Arlington Public Schools students.