About

Cunxi is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the ECE Department at the University of Utah. Cunxi was a PostDoc Cornell University with Prof. Zhiru Zhang in 2018-2019, and was a PostDoc at Integrated Systems Laboratory (LSI) at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, with Prof. Giovanni De Micheli in 2017-2018. He received Ph.D. degree from University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) in 2017, under the supervision of Prof. Maciej Ciesielski. His research interests focus on novel algorithm, system, and hardware designs for computing and security, with special focuses on formal methods, design automation, and machine learning. Cunxi was a research intern at IBM T.J Watson Research Center in 2015 and 2016. His work received the best paper nomination at ASP-DAC (2017), TCAD Best paper nomination (2018), the 1st place at DAC Security Contest (2017), nomination for ACM Outstanding Ph.D dissertation (by UMass Amherst), and NSF CAREER Award (2021). He served as Organizing Committee in IWLS, ICCD, VLSI-SoC, ASAP, as TPC member in ICCAD, DATE, ASP-DAC, and panelist/reviewer for several funding agencies. Yu's group is currently supported by NSF FMiTF Award, NSF SHF Core, NSF CAREER Award, Xilinx, and DOE Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT).

News (Past News)

• 05/2021 One paper accepted in Nature Scientific Reports. Congrats to Yingjie and all co-authors!
• 05/2021 Congrats to Tara Zamani for winning Outstanding Student Researcher Award !!
• 05/2021 Welcome Dr. Minhan Lou joining the group as PostDoc researcher (co-advised with Rodriguez, Gao)
• 03/2021 Yu will serve as Program Chair at IWLS'21 and Special Session Chair at ICCD'21.
• 02/2021 One paper accepted in Advanced Photonics Research.
• 02/2021 Two papers accepeted in DAC'21.
• 02/2021 Yu received NSF CAREER Award (Project: OneSense) (News).
• 12/2020 Two new preprints in min-carbon-footprint deep learning accelerations (Graphane and optical computing).
• 10/2020 One paper accepted in MLCAD2020.
• 09/2020 One paper accepted in ASP-DAC'2021.
• 08/2020 Welcome new group memeberis Jiaqi Yin, Sam Culter, and Tara Zamani!
• 08/2020 Recieved Collabrative NSF Award NSF Formal Methods in the Field (FMitF) on advancing Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) and Deep Learning compilation (Role: Lead PI, co-PI: Dr. Zhiru Zhang).

Tools

• Algebraic Combinational Equivalence Checking (ACEC) [Thesis Version] [New Version] [ACEC@ABC]

• Logic Decryption using Incremental SAT [Website] [Github]

• Formal Verification of GF(2^n) Arithmetic [Website] [Github]

• ML-assisted Synthesis System -- FlowGen[Github], FlowTune (w end-to-end FPGA/ASIC support) [Github] [Talk@Youtube]

Research Employments

Assistant Profesor, ECE Dept., University of Utah (08/2019 - present)

Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University (09/2018 - 08/2019 )

Postdoctoral Researcher, EPFL | École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland (08/2017 - 08/2018 )

Research Assistant, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, VLSI CAD Laboratory (01/2014 - 07/2017)

Research Intern, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Height, New York, USA (05/2016 - 11/2016 & 05/2015 - 09/2015)

 

People

Post-Doc: Dr. Minhan Lou (Summer'21)

PhD Students: Qiwei Yuan (Sp'20 - ), Yingjie Li (Sp'20 - ), Jiaqi Yin, (Sp'21 - )

MS Student: Sam Culter

BS Student: Tara Zamani (Sp'20 - )

 

Education

• Ph.D. Computer System Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 09. 2013 - 04. 2017

  Thesis: Formal Analysis of Arithmetic Circuits using Computer Algebra - Verification, Abstraction, and Reverse Engineering

• B.S. ECE, Zhejiang University City College. 09. 2009 - 06. 2013

 

Professional Service

• Organizing Committee: ASAP'19, IWLS'20, ICCD'20, VLSI-SoC'20, ICCD'21, IWLS'21

• TPC Member: IWLS'17, IWLS'18, IWLS'19, DUHDe@DATE'19, ASP-DAC'20, ICCAD'20, ASP-DAC'21

• Funding Review/Panelist: NSF-CNS'20

• Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on VLSI, IEEE Design&Test, IEEE Transactions on CAD, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, IEEE Embedded System Letter

Conference Reviewer: VTS'15, ICCAD'15, CHES'16, DAC'17, DAC'18, ASPDAC'19, FPGA'19