ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation (OPDA)

Description

Design automation has gained widespread acceptance within the VLSI circuits and systems design community. Continued advances in computer-aided design methodologies, algorithms, and tools are essential to addressing rapidly increasing design complexity, rising performance and energy-efficiency demands, and ever-shorter time-to-market requirements.

To encourage innovative and ground-breaking research in electronic design automation, SIGDA established an annual award recognizing an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation that makes the most substantial contribution to the theory and or application of electronic design automation.

The award consists of a plaque and a USD 1,000 honorarium. The recipient is selected by a committee of experts from academia and industry, appointed by ACM in consultation with the SIGDA Chair.

Eligibility and Nomination Requirements

For the 2025 award cycle, the nominated dissertation must have been completed and dated between 1 July 2023 and 31 December 2024.

Each nomination package must include the following materials:

  • A PDF copy of the Ph.D. dissertation, written in English
  • A statement of up to two pages from the nominee describing the significance, originality, and major contributions of the dissertation
  • A nomination letter endorsing the application, submitted by the nominee’s advisor, department chair, or dean of the school
  • Up to three optional letters of recommendation from experts in the field

Schedule

The submission deadline for the 2025 ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation was 30 April 2025, and the nomination process for the 2025 award is now closed.

Please stay tuned for the call for nominations for the 2026 award, which will be announced through SIGDA communication channels.

2025 Award Committee

Ismail Bustany (AMD), Mustafa Badaroglu (Qualcomm), Jintong Hu (University of Pittsburgh), Sharad Malik (Princeton University), Mark Ren (NVIDIA), Aviral Shrivastava (Arizona State University), Linghao Song (Yale University), Peh Li Shiuan (National University of Singapore), Natarajan Viswanathan (Cadence), Robert Wille (Technical University of Munich).

All standard conflict-of-interest regulations as stated in ACM policy apply.

Past Awardees

2024Lukas Burgholzer, for the dissertation “Design Automation Tools and Software for Quantum Computing”, Johannes Kepler University Linz. Advisors: Robert Wille and Jens Eisert.
2023Zhiyao Xie, for the dissertation “Intelligent Circuit Design and Implementation with Machine Learning”, Duke University, Advisors: Yiran Chen and Hai Li
2022Ganapati Bhat, for the dissertation “Design, Optimization, and Applications of Wearable IoT Devices”, Arizona State University, Advisor: Umit Y. Ogras
2021Ahmedullah Aziz, for the dissertation “Device-Circuit Co-Design Employing Phase Transition Materials for Low power Electronics”, Purdue University, Advisor: Sumeet Gupta.
2020Gengjie Chen, for the dissertation “VLSI Routing: Seeing Nano Tree in Giga Forest,” The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Advisor: Evangeline Young.
2019Tsung-Wei Huang, for the dissertation “Distributed Timing Analysis“, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Advisor: Martin D. F. Wong.
2018Xiaoqing Xu, for the dissertation “Standard Cell Optimization and Physical Design in Advanced Technology Nodes,” University of Texas at Austin. Advisor: David Z. Pan.
Pramod Subramanyan, for the dissertation “Deriving Abstractions to Address Hardware Platform Security Challenges,” Princeton University. Advisor: Sharad Malik.
2017Jeyavijayan Rajendran, for the dissertation “Trustworthy Integrated Circuit Design,” New York University. Advisor: Ramesh Karri.
2016Zheng Zhang, for the dissertation “Uncertainty Quantification for Integrated Circuits and Microelectromechanical Systems,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Advisor: Luca Daniel.
2015Wenchao Li, for the dissertation “Specification Mining: New Formalisms, Algorithms and Applications,” University of California at Berkeley. Advisor: Sanjit Seshia.
2014Wangyang Zhang, for the dissertation “IC Spatial Variation Modeling: Algorithms and Applicaitons,” Carnegie Mellon University. Advisors: Xin Li and Rob Rutenbar
2013Duo Ding, for the dissertation “CAD for Nanolithography and Nanophotonics,” University of Texas at Austin. Advisor: David Z. Pan
Guojie Luo, for the dissertation “Placement and Design Planning for 3D integrated Circuits,” UCLA. Advisor: Jason Cong
2012Tan Yan, for the dissertation “Algorithmic Studies on PCB Routing,” defended with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
2011Nishant Patil, for the dissertation “Design and Fabrication of Imperfection-Immune Carbon Nanotube Digital VLSI Circuits,” Stanford University.
2010Himanshu Jain, for the dissertation “Verification using Satisfiability Checking, Predicate Abstraction, and Craig Interpolation,” Carnegie Mellon University.
2009Kai-Hui Chang, for the dissertation “Functional Design Error Diagnosis, Correction and Layout Repair of Digital Circuits”, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
2008(No award is given this year)
2007(No award is given this year)
2006Haifeng Qian of University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for the thesis entitled “Stochastic and Hybrid Linear Equation Solvers and their Applications in VLSI Design Automation”.
2005Shuvendu Lahiri of Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for a thesis entitled “Unbounded System Verification using Decision Procedure and Predicate Abstraction”
2004Chao Wang of University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Electrical Engineering, for a thesis entitled “Abstraction Refinement for Large Scale Model Checking”
2003Luca Daniel of University of California, Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for a thesis entitled “Simulation and modeling techniques for signal integrity and electromagnetic interference on high frequency electronic systems”
Lintao Zhang of Princeton University Department of Electrical Engineering for a thesis entitled “Searching for truth: techniques for satisfiability of Boolean formulas.”
2002(No award is given this year)
2001Darko Kirovski from University of California, Los Angeles Department of Computer Science for a thesis entitled “Constraint Manipulation Techniques for Synthesis and Verification of Embedded Systems.” The runner-up who received an honorable mention in that years ceremony was Michael Beattie of Carnegie Mellon University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for a thesis entitled “Efficient Electromagnetic Modeling for Giga-scale IC Interconnect.” 
2000Robert Brent Jones of Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering for a thesis entitled “Applications of Symbolic Simulation To the Formal Verification of Microprocessors.”