Zijian Ding is a second year PhD student whose research focuses on advancing AI/ML for hardware design, including software-to-HLS transformation, foundation models for performance prediction, and efficient design optimization. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees. 

Congratulations to Zifan He for receiving the annual AMD Heterogeneous Accelerated Computing award.  He is a second year PhD student working on  algorithm-hardware co-design to enable efficient and high-quality inference of LLMs.  His research includes (1) Efficient Language Processing with Unlimited Context Length:  Zifan developed the Hierarchical Memory Transformer (HMT), a framework designed to improve memory efficiency…
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Wan-Hsuan Lin’s research focuses on building scalable tools and algorithms that translate quantum programs into instructions executable on real quantum hardware. With 7 publications in top design automation venues, she has made significant contributions to improving the scalability and efficiency of quantum compilers. Pushing the Limit for the Compilation Scalability: As quantum chips increase in…
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Prof. Jason Cong received the UIUC Grainger College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service “for impactful research and entrepreneurial work on electronic design automation, quantum and customized computing, FPGA, and highly scalable algorithms.”  The other six awardees include a university president, an US Air Force Major General, and highly successful industry leaders and entrepreneurs…
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ACM announcement states that they have named Jason Cong, the holder of the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Excellence at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, as the recipient of the 2024 ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. Cong is recognized for fundamental contributions to the design and automation of field-programmable systems and customizable computing….
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Congratulations to Prof. Cong for his paper titled “Optimizing FPGA-based Accelerator Design for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks,” published at the 23rd International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA’15) and co-authored with Chen Zhang, Peng Li, Guangyu Sun, Yijin Guan, and Bingjun Xiao, being inducted into the FPGA and Reconfigurable Computing Hall of Fame by the…
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Prof. Cong delivered a keynote speech entitled “Compilation and Architecture Optimization for Quantum Computing” at the 30th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2025) on January 22, 2025, Tokyo, Japan. ASP-DAC is the largest conference in Asia and South-Pacific regions on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) area for VLSI and systems. ASP-DAC has been started at 1995…
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Congratulations to Computer Science PhD graduate Karl Marrett (supervised by Prof. Jason Cong) for winning the Best Student Paper Award titled “Gossamer: Scaling Image Processing and Reconstruction to Whole Brains” at Brain Informatics ’24, the principal conference at the intersection of AI and brain imaging.  This work is based on interdisciplinary research between UCLA Computer Science (led by…
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Dr. Jason Cong received the 2024 Phil Kaufman Award, the highest honor in Electronic System Design, on Nov. 6, 2024 at the Annual Phil Kaufman Award and Banquet in San Jose, CA, hosted by the ESD Alliance. The highlights of Dr. Cong’s achievements are available from the press release by the ESDA and IEEE CEDA, and the UCLA Samueli Engineering’s…
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Prof. Cong has been selected to receive the 2025 ISPD Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented at the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) in Austin, TX, on March 16-19, 2025.  This award is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of physical design automation that span several decades. The purpose…
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