News

• [2026/03] (Award) Received the ASPLOS’26 Best Paper Award in Pittsburgh.
• [2026/03] (Paper) 1 ASPLOS’26 paper (PF-LLM) presented in Pittsburgh. Acceptance rate=14.5%.
• [2026/03] (Award) Received the CityU HK EE Young Alumni Award.
• [2026/03] (Service) Served as the TPC Track Co-Chair of ISEDA’26.
• [2026/02] (Paper) 9 DAC’26 papers (COOL, ComPart, IMPart, LEAP, RTL-Sequencer, G-Power, RTL-BenchMT, FSGen, ShortCircuit) to be presented in Long Beach, all 9 first-authored by my students: Qijun, Yao, Jing, Wenkai, Yugao, Jay, Ziyan, and Dimi.
• [2026/02] (Paper) 1 IEEE TCAD’26 paper (ATLAS-extension) accepted, first-authored by my student Wenkai.
• [2026/01] (Paper) 1 IEEE TCAD’26 paper (MFSPart) accepted, first-authored by my student Yugao.
• [2026/01] (Paper) 1 ASP-DAC’26 paper (ReadyPower) presented in Hong Kong, first-authored by my student Qijun. Acceptance rate=29.9%. This paper scored the 2nd highest in the track.
• [2026/01] (Service) Served as the ACM SIGDA Student Research Forum Chair and 4 Session Chairs of ASPDAC’26 in HK.

• [2025/12] (Paper) 1 NeurIPS’25 paper (ArchPower) presented in San Diego, first-authored by my student Qijun. Acceptance rate=24.9%.
• [2025/12] (Service) Chaired and hosted IEEE CEDA EDAthon (EDA programming contest) 2025 at HKUST.
• [2025/11] (Award) My student Wenji won the Inaugural IEEE LAD (LLM-aided design) Fellowship, with a cash award of US$ 10,000. He is also the only LAD Fellow outside the US.
• [2025/11] (Paper) 1 EMNLP’25 paper (SynC-LLM) presented in Nov in Suzhou, first-authored by my student Shang. Acceptance rate=22%.
• [2025/10] (Award) My student Wenji won the 2nd Place in the highly competitive ACM SIGDA Student Research Competition (SRC) at ICCAD’25 in Munich.
• [2025/10] (Paper) 2 ICCAD’25 papers (GenEDA, HLSDebugger) presented in Munich, both first-authored by my students: Wenji and Jing. Acceptance rate=25%.
• [2025/08] (Talk) Delivered a talk “AI-Assisted EDA: from Supervised Learning to Circuit Foundation Model” at ASPDAC TPC workshop in Kyoto.
• [2025/07] (Talk) Delivered a keynote “AI-Assisted EDA: from Supervised Learning to Circuit Foundation Model” at the Summer School hosted by ICT, CAS in Beijing.
• [2025/07] (Service) Served as the TPC Member and Organizing Committee Member of ASPDAC’26.
• [2025/06] (Grant) A Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF) led by me is granted, securing HKD 1,437,732. It scored 5.0/5.0. Thanks RGC!
• [2025/06] (Paper) 1 ISCA’25 paper (Prophet) presented in Tokyo, first-authored by my student Mengming. Acceptance rate=23%.
• [2025/06] (Service) (Talk) Organized a 3-hour tutorial about “Foundation AI model and its applications in EDA” at DAC’25. Speakers include Prof Ang Li, Dr Wei Wen, and myself.
• [2025/06] (Service) Served as the PhD Forum Co-Chair and a Session Chair at DAC’25.
• [2025/06] (Paper) 5 DAC’25 papers (NetTAG, AutoPower, ATLAS, SynCircuit, ELF) presented in San Francisco, all 5 first-authored by my students: Qijun, Wenkai, Wenji, Yao, Shang, and Dimi. Acceptance rate=23%.
• [2025/05] (Service) Start to serve as the Chair of IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) Hong Kong Chapter.
• [2025/05] (Talk) Delivered an invited talk “AI-Assisted EDA: from Supervised Learning to Circuit Foundation Model” at Synopsys, ACCESS Symposium, and ISEDA’25 special session.
• [2025/05] (Service) Organized and chaired a panel about “foundation AI model for EDA” at ISEDA’25. Speakers include Prof Qiang Xu, Prof Cheng Zhuo, Prof Huawei Li, Prof Fan Yang, and Dr Mingxuan Yuan.
• [2025/05] (Service) Served as the TPC track co-chair (Power and Timing Track) and a Session Chair of ISEDA’25.
• [2025/04] (Service) Served as TPC member of ICCAD’25.
• [2025/04] (Paper) 1 ICLR’25 paper (CircuitFusion) presented in Singapore, first-authored by my student Wenji. Acceptance rate=32%.
• [2025/03] (Service) Served as TPC track chair (Computer-Aided Design Track) of GLSVLSI’25.
• [2025/03] (Paper) 1 HPCA’25 paper (Alecto) presented in Las Vegas, first-authored by my student Mengming. Acceptance rate=21%.
• [2025/03] (Paper) Released a comprehensive 60-page survey about foundation AI model for chip design (circuit foundation model), covering 130+ recent works.
• [2025/02] (Grant) A Research Grants Council (RGC) Collaborative Research Fund (CRF)-YCRG led by me is granted, securing HKD 3,537,000. Thanks RGC and our Co-PIs!
• [2025/01] (Award) ASP-DAC’25 Best Paper Nomination (SMART-GPO).
• [2025/01] (Paper) 7 ASP-DAC’25 paper presented (CircuitGen, CircuitEncoder, FirePower, AssertLLM, Pointer, SMART-GPO, PRICING) in Tokyo, 5 first-authored by my students: Qijun, Wenji, Shang. Acceptance rate=29%.

• [2024/12] (Paper)1 IEEE TCAD’25 paper (PANDA-extension) accepted, first-authored by my student Qijun.
• [2024/12] (Talk) Delivered a guest undergraduate lecture entitled “Introduction to AI-Assisted EDA” for the Peking University.
• [2024/10] (Paper) 1 IEEE TCAD’25 paper (RTL-Coder) accepted, first-authored by my student Shang.
• [2024/10] (Service) Served as TPC member of DATE’25.
• [2024/10] (Service) (Talk) Organized and chaired a special session about “open-source circuit data” at ICCAD’24. Speakers include Prof Hai Li, Prof Sachin Sapatnekar, Prof Vidya Chhabria, Prof Keren Zhu, and myself.
• [2024/10] (Paper) 2 ICCAD’24 papers (OpenLLM-RTL) presented in New Jersey, 1 first-authored by my student Shang. Acceptance rate=24%.
• [2024/09] (Talk) Delivered invited talk about “LLM-aided Chip Generation” at CCF-Chip Rising Star Forum in Shanghai and LLM for Chip Design Forum by Southeast University.
• [2024/09] (Award) Received the Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award 2023-24 by ECE.
• [2024/09] Wenji, Mengming, Jay, and Wenkai formally joined HKUST as PhD students, welcome!
• [2024/09] (Paper) 1 ACM TRETS paper (FADO 2.0) accepted.
• [2024/08] (Award) ISLPED’24 Best Paper Nomination (8 out of 167), first-author is my student Yao.
• [2024/08] (Paper) 1 ISLPED’24 paper presented (AgileDev) in Newport Beach, US, first-authored by my student Yao. Acceptance rate=23%.
• [2024/08] (Service) Served as TPC member and Session Chair of ASPDAC’25.
• [2024/07] (Service) (Talk) Organized HKUST-HKUST(GZ) Joint EDA workshop as the Chair. Speakers inlcude Prof Yuzhe Ma, Prof Hongce Zhang, Prof Zhe Lin, Prof Xingquan Li, Prof Yangdi Lyu, and myself.
• [2024/07] (Paper) 1 IEEE TCAD’24 paper (MasterRTL-extension) accepted, first-authored by my student Wenji.
• [2024/06] (Award) LAD’24 Best Paper Nomination (6 out of 50), first-author is my student Shang.
• [2024/06] (Paper) 1 LAD’24 Paper (RTL-Coder) presented in San Jose, US, first-authored by my student Shang.
• [2024/06] (Paper) 1 IEEE TCAD’25 paper (PROPHET-extension) accepted.
• [2024/06] (Grant) A Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF) led by me is granted, securing HKD 1,121,111. It scored 5.0/5.0. Thanks RGC!
• [2024/06] (Paper) 2 DAC’24 papers (RTL-Timer) presented in San Francisco, 1 first-authored by my student Wenji. Acceptance rate=22%.
• [2024/04] (Service) Served as TPC member of ICCAD’24.
• [2024/02] (Grant) HKUST-HKUST (GZ) project is granted. The project at HK-side is led by me, securing HKD 500,000 for my share.
• [2024/02] (Talk) Delivered invited talk about “AI-assisted EDA” at CUHK and CityU HK.
• [2024/02] (Service) Served as TPC member of MLCAD’24 and LAD’24.
• [2024/01] (Paper) 2 ASPDAC’24 papers (RTLLM, APPLE) presented in Incheon, Korea, both first-authored by my students: Yao and Tao. Acceptance rate=29%.
• [2024/01] (Service) Start to serve as the Treasurer of IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) Hong Kong Chapter.
• [2024/01] Jing and Yugao formally joined HKUST as PhD students, welcome!

• [2023/12] (Grant) An industrial project led by me is granted, securing HKD 1,603,950.
• [2023/12] (Grant) An industrial project led by me is granted, securing HKD 1,087,200.
• [2023/11] (Paper) 2 ICCAD’23 papers (MasterRTL, PANDA) presented in San Francisco, both first-authored by my students: Qijun and Wenji. Acceptance rate=23%.
• [2023/11] (Grant) An industrial project led by me is granted, securing HKD 1,370,000.
• [2023/10] (Award) Received the RGC HK Early Career Award 2023 (only 7 out of 525 early-career faculties), at RGC Award Presentation Ceremony in Hong Kong.
• [2023/09] Qijun, Yao, and Shang formally joined HKUST as PhD students, welcome!
• [2023/08] (Grant) National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Young Scientists Fund (YSF) led by me is granted, securing HKD 339,570. Thanks NSFC!
• [2023/08] (Talk) Delivered invited talk about “power and timing modeling” at HiSilicon CPU Summit, HKUST-ICDC Symposium, and EDA Forum at HKUST (GZ).
• [2023/07] (Award) Received the ACM Outstanding Disseration Award in EDA 2023 (1 awardee worldwide per year), at DAC’23 in San Francisco, USA.
• [2023/07] (Award) Received the WAIC Yufan “Brilliant Star” Award 2023 (10 excellent AI researchers under age of 35) in Shanghai.
• [2023/07] (Paper) 2 DAC’23 papers (PROPHET, PertNAS) presented in San Francisco. Acceptance rate=23%.
• [2023/06] (Grant) A Research Grants Council (RGC) Early Career Scheme (ECS) led by me is granted, securing HKD 1,156,155. It scored 5.0/5.0. Thanks RGC!
• [2023/04] (Service) Served as TPC member of ICCAD’23.
• [2023/03] (Award) Received the EDAA Outstanding Disseration Award 2023 (4 awardees worldwide per year), at DATE’23 in Antwerp, Belgium.
• [2023/02] (Paper) 1 FPGA’23 paper (FADO) presented in Monterey, US. Acceptance rate=28%.
• [2023/01] (Award) Received the ASPDAC’23 Best Paper Award in Tokyo, Japan.
• [2023/01] (Paper) 2 ASPDAC’23 papers presented in Tokyo. 1 won the Best Paper Award (2 out of 328), the other 1 received Best Paper Nomination (11 out of 328). Acceptance rate=31%.
• [2023/01] Qijun and Wenji started to work with me as RA and co-supervised master student. Later on they joined my group as PhD student.

• [2022/11] (Paper) 1 IEEE TCAD’25 paper (security of AI for EDA) published, first-authored by myself.
• [2022/11] (Paper) 2 ICCAD’22 papers (DEEP, Robustify) presented in San Diego, 1 first-authored by myself. Acceptance rate=22.5%.
• [2022/08] (Service) Served as TPC member of ASPDAC’23.
• [2022/08] (Award) Recognized by ACM TODAES Distinguished Reviewer Board.
• [2022/08] (Paper) 2 Book Chapters published in Springer Book: “Machine Learning Applications in Electronic Design Automation”, 1 first-authored by myself.
• [2022/06] Joined HKUST ECE as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.
• [2022/05] Received Ph.D. Degree from Duke University.