News

Dear Members of ACM SIGDA,

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is slowly returning to a new normal. In the Design Automation Conference (DAC) held in San Francisco last month, more than a thousand engineers, scholars, and students gathered in person for the first time in the last two and half years. They presented research ideas, exchanged industrial and societal information, and discussed collaboration opportunities. The only notable difference was probably that everyone was  wearing a mask. 

As  the world reopened from the pandemic, SIGDA elected its new executive committee (EC) in the summer of 2021. Like its predecessors, the new EC is responsible for all regular operations  of SIGDA, including conferences, publications and media, educational and technical activities, awards, and members’ benefits. Understandably, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous unprecedented challenges that the current EC, and the whole SIGDA in general, are facing: disrupted international travels, unpredictable outbreaks of local epidemics, and lack of efficient and effective communications among our members, to name a few. Fortunately, the volunteers of SIGDA and the whole society at large have accumulated extensive experience in overcoming these challenges: the successful in-person DAC last month was just a perfect example. 

Building on these experiences, the new EC has been working tirelessly with our volunteers and the whole society to meet these challenges and prepare for the era after the pandemic. A new “Who’s Who” column of the SIGDA website (https://www.sigda.org/whos-who/) has been launched so that we’d still be able to learn about those active young researchers and scholars all over the world. A new version of ACM/SIGDA E-Newsletter is in the works, among many initiatives that are being planned. I am very proud of how our members, volunteers, and SIGDA leadership team have persevered through the challenging times and have also been delighted to witness the remarkable progress and achievements we have made in the past year. With this message we not only celebrate a successful 2021 with you, but also look forward to sharing some big goals and ideas soon! Our fellows will get in touch with you in the new year about our new plans and initiatives.

My warmest wishes to all the SIGDA members and their families for a healthy, restorative and productive 2022!

Yiran Chen

Chair of ACM SIGDA

The entire electronic design automation (EDA) community is in profound grief for the loss of Davide Giri, a graduate student at Columbia University, who fell victim to a horrific violence last Friday (December 3, 2021).  On behalf of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA), we would like to extend our most heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Davide Giri.

Davide Giri, a Ph.D. Candidate of Computer Science, had been an active contributor to a number of important research projects on architectures and system-level design methodologies for heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC). He was also the author of multiple papers published in the top conferences and journals in our fields. The EDA community mourns the loss of such a bright young researcher who should have a very promising career.

Unfortunately, this tragedy is just one of many atrocious attacks that have recently happened to graduate students. We condemn the senseless violence and would like to urge the government, universities, and communities to take effective actions to protect the safety of our students and faculty members.

The ACM SIGDA and IEEE CEDA would like to offer help and support to anyone in our community who is impacted by such tragic events, physically or emotionally. We also encourage our members to reach out to the family, friends, and colleagues of Davide Giri, express our condolences, and help each other heal from such a big emotional loss. We hope that through our collective voice and power, we will lift up fellow members of our community during this trying time.

Regards,

Yiran Chen, Chair of ACM SIGDA

Yao-Wen Chang, President of IEEE CEDA