SIGDA to Celebrate Milestones at 44th Design Automation Conference

Business Wire, June 5, 2007

20th Anniversary of SIGDA University Booth and 10th Anniversary of SIGDA Ph.D. Forum

SAN DIEGO -- The ACM's Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) will celebrate two significant anniversaries at the 44th Design Automation Conference (DAC). This year marks the 20th SIGDA/DAC University Booth (Booth #3672), a venue for the university community from around the world to demonstrate EDA tools, design projects, and instructional materials at the conference. To commemorate the 20th edition, Mentor Graphics Corp. has sponsored a special University Booth redesign. SIGDA also will host its 10th annual ACM SIGDA Ph.D. Forum at DAC on Tuesday, June 5. Aimed at strengthening ties between academia and industry, this competitive poster session provides Ph.D. students an opportunity to present and discuss their dissertation research with people in the EDA community. The 44th DAC is being held June 4-8 at the San Diego Convention Center.

"The creation of the Ph.D. Forum by Soha Hassoun was a major contribution to SIGDA's relationship to our members. It transformed our mundane 'member meeting' into a major scholarly and social event at DAC," said Steve Levitan, general chair of 44th DAC executive committee and previous chair of SIGDA. "The Ph.D. Forum celebrates the work of the best Ph.D. students in our field and, in so doing, gives visibility for SIGDA to the EDA community as a whole."

"The SIGDA/DAC University Booth highlights software produced by graduate students at the universities. Many of the companies at the time, and even now, grew out of new ideas coming out of universities," said Don Thomas, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and 24th DAC Program Chair, one of the University Booth founders, along with Dan Gajski, Janie Irwin, and Chuck Shaw.

10th Annual ACM/SIGDA Ph.D. Forum

The Ph.D. Forum has grown steadily since it was established ten years ago, and is now one of the premier venues for students in design automation to get feedback on their research and for industry to see academic work in progress. Participation in the forum is competitive, with an acceptance rate of about 30 percent and 30-35 students presenting each year and up to 500 attendees in recent years.

The 10th annual ACM SIGDA Ph.D. Forum will be held on Tuesday, June 5, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in the Sails Pavilion of the San Diego Convention Center. The Forum will begin with a presentation on SIGDA's programs and this year's SIGDA Technical Leadership Awards. Light refreshments will be served at 7:30 p.m. The Forum is open to all members of the design automation community and is free of charge. It is co-located with DAC for the convenience of the large DAC audience, but DAC registration is not required to attend this event. The Forum is sponsored by SIGDA and DAC as well as corporate sponsors Altera Corp., Cadence Design Systems, Inc., IBM, Intel, Philips, and Synopsys, Inc.

"Participating in the Ph.D. Forum as a student offered me a unique opportunity not only to find the problems in upcoming research areas, but also to understand the complex and continuously evolving amalgam of EDA, comprising semiconductor companies, CAD vendors, startups, and academia," said Rupesh Shelar, Senior Component Design Engineer, Intel and 2003 (6th) Ph.D. Forum participant.

"The interactions and collaborations I had at the Ph.D. Forum when I participated as a graduate student in 1999 led to a couple of U.S. patents filed/issued, and several ideas and technologies out of my Ph.D. research that were ultimately used by leading semiconductor manufacturers," said David Z. Pan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Texas, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.

"The students benefit from timely feedback on research progress, job opportunities, and from establishing a sense of belonging to the EDA community at large," said Soha Hassoun, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Tufts University and founder of the Ph.D. Forum, "and several other conferences have followed suit, establishing their own PhD forums."

20(th) SIGDA/DAC University Booth

The University Booth allows students to interact with members of the EDA academic and industrial communities, as well as other students, forming cohorts of future EDA professionals. The demos provide a starting point to varied discussions on current and future research directions.

The University Booth was first established in 1987 to foster increased connections between academia and exhibitors at the conference and provide opportunities for live demonstrations of university-developed software. Since then, the University Booth has helped many participants in getting professional positions in academia and industry by providing valuable opportunities for students and those working in the industry to interact, network, and share ideas. Last year, the booth had nearly 50 demonstrations from all over the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Korea, France, Singapore, and Taiwan. ACM/SIGDA, EDAC, the Design Automation Conference, and the EDA Industry sponsor the SIGDA/DAC University Booth.