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