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David Zhigang Pan

Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

David Z. Pan (ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, SPIE Fellow) received his B.S. degree in Physics from Peking University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 2000 to 2003, he was a Research Staff Member with the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. He has been an Assistant Professor (2003-2008), Associate Professor (2008-2013), and Professor (2013-) with The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include electronic design automation, efficient machine learning, hardware acceleration, and AI for chip designs (digital/analog/mixed-signal/RF and emerging technologies). He has published over 500 refereed journal and conference papers, and is the holder of 10 U.S. Patents. He has graduated over 55 PhDs and postdocs at UT Austin, who are now taking key academic and industry roles.

Research

Research Areas:
Research Interests:
  • Architecture, Computer Systems, and Embedded Systems
  • Integrated Circuits & Systems
Current Research:

Design automation for digital/analog/mixed-signal circuits and systems; hardware software co-design for machine learning; hardware security; FPGA prototyping; optical computing and optical interconnect; CAD for emerging technologies and applications; vertical integration of architecture, CAD/circuit, and technology

Select Publications

Hanqing Zhu, Zhenyu Zhang, Wenyan Cong, Xi Liu, Sem Park, Vikas Chandra, Bo Long, David Z. Pan, Zhangyang Wang, and Jinwon Lee, “APOLLO: Greater Memory Savings than GaLore, Superior Performance to AdamW,” The 8th Annual Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys), Santa Clara, CA, May 12-15, 2025. (Honorable Mention Outstanding Paper)

Zhili Xiong, Rachel Selina Rajarathnam, and David Z. Pan, “A Data-Driven, Congestion-Aware and Open-Source Timing-Driven FPGA Placer Accelerated by GPUs,” The 32nd IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), Orlando, FL, USA, May 5-8, 2024. (Best Paper Award)

Yibo Lin, Zixuan Jiang, Jiaqi Gu, Wuxi Li, Shounak Dhar, Haoxing Ren, Brucek Khailany, and David Z. Pan, “DREAMPlace: Deep Learning Toolkit-Enabled GPU Acceleration for Modern VLSI Placement,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), Vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 748-761, April 2021. (Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award)

Jiaqi Gu, Zheng Zhao, Chenghao Feng, Mingjie Liu, Ray T. Chen, David Z. Pan, “Towards Area-Efficient Optical Neural Networks: An FFT-based Architecture,” Asian and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), 2020. (Best Paper Award)

Kaveh Shamsi, Meng Li, Travis Meade, Zheng Zhao, David Z. Pan, and Yier Jin, “AppSAT: Approximately Deobfuscating Integrated Circuits,” IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), 2017 (Best Paper Award)

View complete list

Awards & Honors

  • 2024 – Best Paper Award, FCCM
  • 2021 – ACM Fellow
  • 2021 – Best Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on CAD
  • 2021 - Honor for PhD Student Jiaqi Gu: First Place, ACM SRC Grand Finals (Graduate Category)
  • 2020 - Best Paper Award, ISPD
  • 2020 - Best Paper Award, ASP-DAC
  • 2019 - Best Paper Award, DAC
  • 2018 - Honor for PhD Student Meng Li: First Place, ACM SRC Grand Finals (Graduate Category)
  • 2017 - SPIE Fellow
  • 2014 - IEEE Fellow
  • 2013 - William J. McCalla Best Paper Award, ICCAD
  • 2013 - SRC Technical Excellence Award

Contact Info

David Zhigang Pan
Professor, Silicon Laboratories Endowed Chair, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Homepage
(512) 471-1436
dpan@ece.utexas.edu
EER 4.880
CV