David Z. Pan, Fellow of ACM, IEEE, SPIE
Silicon Labs Endowed Chair Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
GSC Member, Computer Science Department
The University of Texas at Austin
Email: dpan at ece.utexas.edu
Office: EER 4.880. Tel: 512-471-1436.

Office hours: M/W 1:30-2:30pm (M in-person, W via Zoom) and by appointment


Biography and CV

Recent News

  • 11/28/2023: Congratulations to Hyunsu Chae for receiving Cadence Diversity in Technology Scholarship for 2023!
  • 11/21/2023: Congratulations to Dr. Mark Haoxing Ren, UTDA alumnus and currently Director of Design Automation Research at Nvidia for his elevation to IEEE Fellow.
  • 10/6/2023: UTDA team won the MLCAD FPGA Macro-Placement Conteste 1st Place! Great job, Zhili, Rachel, Zhixing, and Hanqing!
  • 4/29/2023: I'm invited to serve in the External Advisory Board of NSF A3D3 Institute.
  • 4/25/2023: Congratulations to my PhD student Jiaqi Gu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen) for winning the UT-ECE Department 2022-2023 Jacome Dissertation Prize. Jiaqi will join ASU as an Assistant Professor in August 2023.
  • 8/26/2022: Congratulations to my PhD students Chenghao Feng, Jiaqi Gu, and Hanqing Zhu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen) for winning the Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition 2021-2022 with a $3,000 cash prize! Our winning entry is entitled "A compact 4x4 butterfly-style silicon photonic-electronic neural chip for hardware-efficient deep learning."
  • 5/9/2022: The Senior Capstone Team (Nick Canga, Alex Kremer, Austin Rath, Connor Smith, Abhi Sridhar, Zane Zwanenburg) "HitStick" that I mentored won First Place - Entrepreneurial Category. Very cool project - congrats!
  • 3/8/2022: Congratulations to my former PhD student Wei Ye (PhD in 2020) for winning the 2022 EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award for her dissertation "Design for Manufacturability and Reliability through Learning and Optimization"! Wei is the third member from my group who has won this award. Cheers!
  • 1/19/2022: I'm truly honored and humbled to be named an ACM Fellow (class of 2021) "For contributions to electronic design automation, including design for manufacturing and physical design". I'd like to cordially thank all my current/former students, collaborators, mentors, and sponsors!
  • 10/18/2021: Our DREAMPlace (in collaboration with Nvidia) just won the 2021 IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award.
  • 7/28/2021: Proud to be part of the new NSF National AI Institute - TILOS. I will co-lead the Chips Team. UT-ECE News
  • 6/28/2021: I'm looking for a postdoc (or two) working on exciting research projects in AI for IC and (emerging) IC for AI. I'm also looking for highly motivated PhD students. Please check out our recent publications/talks, and send me your CV!
  • 6/24/2021: I gave an IEEE CEDA Virtual Distinguished Lecture on Closing the Virtuous Cycle of AI for IC and IC for AI (on YouTube).
  • 5/19/2021: Congratulations to my PhD student Jiaqi Gu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen) for winning the First Place at the 2021 ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals (Graduate Category). This is extremely competitive as the grand finals are attended by all gold medalists from different ACM Special Interest Groups (SIGs, each SIG is like an IEEE society). This is the second time my students have won this ACM-wide grand prize. To our best knowledge, we are the only group worldwide which has done it twice! So proud and thankful to work with amazing UTDA students - Hook 'em Horns!
  • 5/6/2021: Congratulations to my former PhD student Zhoufeng Ying (co-advised with Prof. Ray Chen) for winning the UT-ECE Department 2019-2020 Jacome Dissertation Prize.
  • More archival news at UTDA.

My Research Group: UT Design Automation Laboratory

Teaching

Editorship

Professional Services (Selected)

Awards & Honors (Selected)

  • 2023 MLCAD FPGA Macro-Placement Contest First Place (Students: Zhili Xiong, Rachel S. Rajarathnam, Zhixing Jiang, Hanqing Zhu)
  • 2023 Honor for PhD Student Jiaqi Gu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen): UT-ECE Margarida Jacome Dissertation Prize
  • 2022 Honor for PhD Students Chenghao Cheng, Jiaqi Gu and Hanqing Zhu: Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition Winner
  • 2022 Honor for PhD Student Wei Ye: EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award
  • 2021 ACM Fellow, for contributions to electronic design automation, including design for manufacturing and physical design
  • 2021 IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award
  • 2021 Honor for PhD Student Jiaqi Gu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen): First Place, ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals (Graduate Category)
  • 2021 Honor for PhD Student Zhoufeng Ying (co-advised with Prof. Ray Chen): UT-ECE Margarida Jacome Dissertation Prize
  • 2021 Honor for PhD Student Ahmet Budak: ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award
  • 2020 Honor for PhD Student Jiaqi Gu: ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition Gold Medal
  • 2020 Silicon Laboratories Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering, UT Austin
  • 2020 Best Paper Award, ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD)
  • 2020 Prolific Author Award, 25th ACM/IEEE Asian and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC)
  • 2020 ASP-DAC 10-Year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award Candidate
  • 2020 Best Paper Award, 25th ACM/IEEE Asian and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC)
  • 2019 Best Paper Award, 56th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC)
  • 2019 Cadence Academic Collaboration Award "for contributions to design for manufacturing and physical design of integrated circuits and systems, and educating a diverse body of outstanding EDA professionals to industry"
  • 2019 IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) Distinguished Lecturer
  • 2019 Honor for PhD Student Meng Li: UT-ECE Margarida Jacome Dissertation Prize
  • 2019 Honor for PhD Student Meng Li: EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award
  • 2018 Honor for PhD Student Wuxi Li: ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition Silver Medal
  • 2018 Best Paper Award, 28th ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI)
  • 2018 Honor for PhD Student Meng Li: First Place, ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals (Graduate Category)
  • 2018 Best Paper Award, Integration - the VLSI Journal
  • 2018 Honor for PhD Student Xiaoqing Xu: ACM Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation
  • 2017 Honor for PhD Student Meng Li: ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition Gold Medal
  • 2017 Best Paper Award, IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST)
  • 2017 ACM ISPD Contest: First Place
  • 2017 SPIE Fellow, for achievements in IC design for manufacturing with advanced lithography
  • 2016 Honor for PhD Student Xiaoqing Xu: ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition Gold Medal
  • 2016 ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) FPGA Placement Contest: First Place
  • 2016 Franco Cerrina Memorial Best Student Paper Award, SPIE Advanced Lithography
  • 2015 Best in Session Award, SRC Techcon
  • 2015 ASP-DAC Frequently Cited Author Award (as one of the top 3 cited authors in the 20 years of ASP-DAC).
  • 2015 ASP-DAC 10-Year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award Candidate
  • 2015 Honor for PhD Student Bei Yu: EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award
  • 2014-2020 Engineering Foundation Endowed Professorship #1, UT Austin
  • 2014 RAISE Faculty Excellence Award (Recognizing Asian & Asian American Faculty & Staff Instilling Strength and Excellence), Asian/Asian American Faculty and Staff Association (AAAFSA) and Asian Desi Pacific Islander American Collective (APAC), UT Austin.
  • 2014 Best Paper Award, ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD)
  • 2014 IEEE Fellow, for contributions to design for manufacturability in integrated circuits
  • 2014 Communications of the ACM, Research Highlights
  • 2013 ICCAD CAD Contest, the 2nd Place
  • 2013 William J. McCalla Best Paper Award, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD)
  • 2013 SRC Technical Excellence Award for "Nanometer IC Design for Manufacturability", with the citation "In recognition of your key contributions to technology that have significantly enhanced the productivity of the semiconductor industry"
  • 2013-2014 Earl N. & Margaret Brasfield Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Engineering, UT Austin
  • 2013 DAC Top 10 Author in Fifth Decade
  • 2013 DAC Prolific Author Award (DAC 25 Club: has published 25 or more papers at DAC)
  • 2013 Honor for PhD Student Duo Ding: ACM Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in EDA
  • 2012 ICCAD'12 CAD Contest, the 2nd Place
  • 2012 Best in Session Award, SRC Techcon
  • 2012 Best Paper Award, 17th IEEE/ACM Asian and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASPDAC)
  • 2011 Overseas and Hong Kong/Macau Scholars Collaborative Research Award (a.k.a. Overseas Distinguished Young Scholar) by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)
  • 2011 IBM Research 2010 Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Math
  • 2011 Best Paper Award, ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD)
  • 2010 IBM Faculty Award
  • 2010 Best Paper Award, IEEE/ACM Asian and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASPDAC)
  • 2009 UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science, Distinguished Young Alumnus Award
  • 2009 Best Paper (IP) Award, IEEE/ACM Design Automation & Test in Europe (DATE) (Awarded at DATE 2010)
  • 2009 Best Student Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on IC Design and Technology (ICICDT)
  • 2009 Grand Prize ($25,000), eASIC Placement Design Challenges (Worldwide Contest)
  • 2008-2009 IEEE CAS Society Distinguished Lecturer
  • 2008 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Recognition of Service Award
  • 2008 Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Inventor Recognition Award
  • 2007 Best Paper in Session Award, SRC Techcon Conference
  • 2007 National Science Foundation (NSF), Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award
  • 2007 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Recognition of Service Award
  • 2006 IBM Faculty Award
  • 2005 ACM/SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award
  • 2005 IBM Faculty Award
  • 2004 IBM Faculty Award
  • 2001 Outstanding Ph.D. Award, UCLA Computer Science Department
  • 2000 SRC Inventor Recognition Award
  • 2000 Dimitris Chorafas Foundation Award
  • 1999-2000 IBM Research Fellowship
  • 1998 Best Paper in Session Award, SRC Techcon Conference
  • 18+ other Best Paper Award Candidates/Finalists: DAC 2021, CICC 2021, DAC 2020, ASP-DAC 2020, DAC 2019, ISPD 2019, DATE 2019, DAC 2014, ASPDAC 2013, DAC 2012, ISPD 2012, ICCAD 2011, DAC 2011, ISPD 2010, ICCAD 2008, ASPDAC 2008, DAC 2006, ASPDAC 2006

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