University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Tsung-Wei Huang has been awarded the 2022 SIGDA Meritorious Service Award, a prestigious recognition for his service contributions to the organization over the years.
SIGDA is a community of people committed to advancing the knowledge of design automation. Huang first became involved with SIGDA as a Ph.D. student and, through those experiences, decided he wanted to volunteer his time as a faculty member. His efforts in outreach to students through planning and chairing/co-chairing various educational activities such as the student hackathon competition and CADathlon have attracted over 200 students to the field since 2017.
One of the pivotal contributions made by Huang to SIGDA over the years has been the planning and execution of the annual international CAD contest that takes place at ICCAD each year. The contest, which Huang has been chair and/or co-chair of for the last three consecutive years, presents contestants with three “problems” or case studies provided by industry leaders such as Cadence and Synopsys. Much of Huang’s involvement with this particular activity is centered around coordinating with these industry leaders to prepare the contest case studies for the many teams that compete at CAD each year.
“Last year we had 60 teams come to participate in the contest,” Huang said, “each team is two to three students, so the total number of participants is around 500.” Winners of this year’s CAD contest are to be announced in September.
Huang’s service is focused on bringing more students into the field, but also ensuring those students have positive experiences and the support they need to succeed and grow. “We actually change their career” he says.
For updates on this year’s CAD contest winners, click here.