NTU Professor Elevated as 2020 ACM Fellow

Distinguished Professor Yao-Wen Chang, Dean of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received one of the most respected titles for leaders in computing and information technology, following the announcement of the roster of 95 by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) on January 13th 2021. The previous Taiwanese researchers to have been appointed are Distinguished Professors Tei-Wei Kuo and Chih-Jen Lin (also from NTU) in 2015.

Of the seven ACM Fellows in Taiwan, four are affiliated with NTU. Other than Professor Chang, they include Executive Vice President and Distinguished Professor Ming-Syan Chen, former Interim President and Distinguished Professor Tei-Wei Kuo, and Distinguished Professor Chih-Jen Lin. The other three Taiwanese ACM Fellows are Dr. Der-Tsai Lee from Academia Sinica (also an Adjunct Distinguished Professor of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), Professor Jason Yi-Bing Lin of National Chiao Tung University (also former Deputy Minister of Science and Technology and current Vice-Chancellor of the University System of Taiwan), and the late former President of National Tsing Hua University Professor Chung Laung Liu. To date, there are 54 ACM Fellows from Asia, with 16 from mainland China, 13 from India, seven from Taiwan, seven from Japan, four from South Korea, four from Hong Kong, two from Singapore, and one from Malaysia. In particular, NTU has the most full-time faculty members as ACM Fellows among all Asian universities.

ACM was established in 1947. With over a hundred thousand members across all computing disciplines from more than 130 countries, it is the most important international society for computing technology. Since 1993, ACM elevates members as Fellows annually to recognize their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology, with no more than 1% of its members as Fellows. The ACM A.M. Turing Award is also referred to as the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” This year, three ACM fellows are recipients of this prestigious award, including Whitfield Diffie, Adi Shamir, and Manuel Blum.

“This year our task in selecting the 2020 Fellows was a little more challenging, as we had a record number of nominations from around the world,” explained ACM President Gabriele Kotsis. “The 2020 ACM Fellows have demonstrated excellence across many disciplines of computing. These men and women have made pivotal contributions to technologies that are transforming the whole industry, as well as our personal lives. We fully expect that these new ACM Fellows will continue in the vanguard in their respective fields."

Professor Chang was recognized for his contributions to algorithmic electronic design automation (EDA). He is also the current (2020/2021) president of the IEEE Council on EDA (IEEE CEDA), the top international EDA society, the first with a non-US/-European affiliation, and the second Taiwanese scholar to be a president of an IEEE Council/Society in over 20 years. In the most recent 30 years, Professor Chang has been the most prolific author for the combined publications of the two top EDA conferences, ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC) and IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) and the top journal IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (IEEE TCAD). He also co-authored a popular, 934-page, English-language EDA textbook. He has also netted numerous awards at home and abroad. He was elevated as an IEEE Fellow in 2013. In the same year, he received four research awards at the 50th ACM/IEEE DAC, the 2nd top performer among the awardees. In 2017, he received the 1st place Best Paper Award among about 700 publications, also the only paper from Taiwan to have received the all-category 1st place best paper award in 57 years. He was ranked 1st worldwide among 40K+ researchers by the Microsoft Academic Search Database for Recent Five-Year Citations in the Hardware and Architecture domain before the system retired in 2012. He has served as the steering committee/general/program chairs of the ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) and general/program chairs of ICCAD. He received the Outstanding Service Award from IEEE CEDA in 2015. He co-founded Maxeda Technology, Inc. in 2015. The company provides the best macro placer on the market, and its clients include prolific key players in IC design.