David Z. Pan, Fellow of ACM, IEEE, SPIE
Professor, Silicon Labs Endowed Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Affiliated Faculty, 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 in F'26: Tue 2-3pm, Th 3-4pm

Biography and CV

Recent News

  • 10/5/2026: I'm very honored and grateful to receive the ๐๐ซ๐จ๐Ÿ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐š๐ฅ ๐€๐œ๐ก๐ข๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ ๐ข๐ง ๐€๐œ๐š๐๐ž๐ฆ๐ข๐š ๐€๐ฐ๐š๐ซ๐ from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, my ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ. UCLA News.
  • 7/8/2026: My great honor to receive the MediaTek Advanced Research Center (MARC) Academia-Industry Collaboration ๐„๐ฑ๐œ๐ž๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ž๐ง๐ญ ๐‘๐ž๐ฌ๐ž๐š๐ซ๐œ๐ก ๐€๐ฐ๐š๐ซ๐ together with my colleague, Prof. Sensen Li. LinkedIn
  • 6/8/2026: My great honor to receive the Jane Street Research Collaboration Award. .
  • 4/27/2026: Congrats to the Senior Honor Capstone Design team that I mentored for winning the 1st Place - Faculty Proposed Project Category on their project "LLM-Assisted Verilog Generation with Formal Guarantees (students: Amulya Bhattaram, Richard Bai, Garrett Liu, Samuel Mandell, William Peng, Yee Hong Pua). Thanks to my postdoc You Li for help guide them.
  • 1/5/2026: It's my great honor to be named an inaugural Nvidia Research Faculty Fellow. โ€œin recognition your exceptional contributions to research collaboration on Electronic Design Automation algorithms which have significantly enhanced our research efforts in 2025โ€ LinkedIn (photo with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang :). Nvidia Link
  • 9/22/2025: Congrats to my former PhD student Keren Zhu (PhD 2022) for being named ๐Œ๐ˆ๐“ ๐“๐ž๐œ๐ก๐ง๐จ๐ฅ๐จ๐ ๐ฒ ๐‘๐ž๐ฏ๐ข๐ž๐ฐโ€™๐ฌ ๐ˆ๐ง๐ง๐จ๐ฏ๐š๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฌ ๐”๐ง๐๐ž๐ซ 35 (TR35) ๐€๐ฌ๐ข๐š ๐๐š๐œ๐ข๐Ÿ๐ข๐œ 2025 MIT TR35 Link
  • 9/21/2025: Our AAAI'25 paper AnalogCoder was selected among the Most Influential AAAI Papers (2025-09 Version)
  • 5/10/2025: Our paper "APOLLO: SGD-like Memory, AdamW-level Performance" was recognized as an Honorable Mention Outstand Paper at MLSys 2025!
  • 7/25/2024: Congratulations to Shupeng Ning (co-supervised with Prof. Ray Chen) for winning the Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition.
  • 6/25/2024: Congratulations to UTDA alumnus Prof. Bei Yu for winning the prestigious DAC Under-40 Innovators Award.
  • 5/29/2024: UTDA team (Souradip and co-authors) won the Poster Competition 1st Place at the Annual SRC CADT Review.
  • 5/7/2024: Our FCCM 2024 paper "A Data-Driven, Congestion-Aware and Open-Source Timing-Driven FPGA Placer Accelerated by GPUs" won the Best Paper Award! Congratulations to Zhili and Rachel!
  • 4/7/2024: Congratulations to my former PhD student Jiaqi Gu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen) for winning the UT Austin-wide Outstanding Dissertation Award in Mathematics, Engineering, Physical Sciences, and Biological and Life Sciences in 2024. Jiaqi is an Assistant Professor at ASU now.
  • 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!
  • 4/29/2023: I'm invited to serve in the External Advisory Board of NSF A3D3 Institute.
  • More archival news at UTDA.

My Research Group: UT Design Automation Laboratory

Teaching

Editorship

Professional Services (Selected)

Awards & Honors (Selected)

  • 2026 Professional Achievement in Academia Award, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
  • 2026 MediaTek Advanced Research Center (MARC) Academia-Industry Collaboration Excellent Research Award
  • 2026 Jane Street Research Collaboration Award
  • 2026 [Inaugural] Nvidia Research Faculty Fellow. โ€œin recognition your exceptional contributions to research collaboration on Electronic Design Automation algorithms which have significantly enhanced our research efforts in 2025โ€
  • 2025 Honorable Mention Outstand Paper, The 8th Annual Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys)
  • 2025 Honorable Mention Paper Award, International Symposium of EDA (ISEDA)
  • 2024 Best Paper Award, The 32nd IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM)
  • 2024 Honor for PhD Student Jiaqi Gu (co-advised by Prof. Ray Chen): UT Austin Graduate School Outstanding Dissertation Award in Mathematics, Engineering, Physical Science, and Biological and Life Sciences (one per year for the entire UT Austin)
  • 2024 Honor for PhD Student Shupeng Ning (co-advised with Prof. Ray Chen): Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition Winner
  • 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
  • 20+ other Best Paper Award Candidates/Finalists: DAC'21, CICC'21, ICCAD'20, DAC'20, ASP-DAC'20, ICCAD'19, 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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