I received my Ph.D. from the ECE Department at Duke University under the supervision of Prof. Yiran Chen and Prof. Hai “Helen” Li. My research interests include ML systems, AI compilers, and quantum design automation.

📖 Education

• 2022.08 - 2026.01, Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering @ Duke University, Durham, NC, US.
• 2019.08 - 2021.05, M.S. in Electrical Engineering @ University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, US.

💻 Experience

• 2025.05 - 2025.12, Research Intern at Eigen AI, Palo Alto, CA, US.
• 2025.01 - 2025.05, Research Intern at Google, Sunnyvale, CA, US.
• 2024.06 - 2024.08, Research Intern at Accenture Cybersecurity Lab, Washington, D.C., US.
• 2023.06 - 2023.08, Research Intern at Accenture Cybersecurity Lab, Washington, D.C., US.
• 2022.03 - 2022.07, R&D Engineer at Synopsys Inc. (Zebu), Mountain View, CA, US.
• 2021.07 - 2022.03, R&D Engineer at Synopsys Inc. (PrimeTime), Mountain View, CA, US.

🎖 Honors and Awards

• 2026 - Best Paper Candidate (HPCA)
• 2025 - Best Paper Candidate (DATE)
• 2025 - Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award (Duke ECE Graduate Program)
• 2023 - 1st Place in the ACM/IEEE Quantum Computing for Drug Discovery Challenge (1/50)
• 2021 - Master Student Honor Program, University of Southern California

📝 Publications

• Selected Publications

  • MICRO 2026 Feng Cheng, Cong Guo, Junyao Zhang, Haoxuan Shan, Chiyue Wei, Hong Wang, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “Gossamer: A Utility-Driven Architecture for Constant-Budget KV Cache Compression in Reasoning LLMs”. IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), 2026

  • HPCA 2026 (Best Paper Candidate) Chiyue Wei, Cong Guo, Junyao Zhang, Haoxuan Shan, Yifan Xu, Ziyue Zhang, Yudong Liu, Qinsi Wang, Changchun Zhou, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “Focus: A Streaming Concentration Architecture for Efficient Vision-Language Models”. IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), 2026

  • DAC 2026 Yuzhe Fu, Hancheng Ye, Cong Guo, Junyao Zhang, Qinsi Wang, Yueqian Lin, Changchun Zhou, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “FlashFPS: Efficient Farthest Point Sampling for Large-Scale Point Clouds via Pruning and Caching”. Proceedings of the 63rd ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2026

  • ISCA 2025 Feng Cheng, Cong Guo, Chiyue Wei, Junyao Zhang, Changchun Zhou, Edward Hanson, Jiaqi Zhang, Xiaoxiao Liu, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “Ecco: Improving Memory Bandwidth and Capacity for LLMs via Entropy-Aware Cache Compression”. ACM/IEEE 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), 2025

  • ISCA 2025 Junyao Zhang, Hanrui Wang, Qi Ding, Jiaqi Gu, Reouven Assouly, William D. Oliver, Song Han, Kenneth R. Brown, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “QPlacer: Frequency-Aware Placement for Superconducting Quantum Computers”. ACM/IEEE 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), 2025

  • DATE 2025 (Best Paper Candidate) Junyao Zhang, Guanglei Zhou, Feng Cheng, Jonathan Hao-Cheng Ku, Qi Ding, Jiaqi Gu, Hanrui Wang, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “qGDP: Quantum Legalization and Detailed Placement for Superconducting Quantum Computers”. Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE), 2025

  • DAC 2024 Jonathan Ku, Junyao Zhang, Haoxuan Shan, Saichand Samudrala, Jiawen Wu, Qilin Zheng, Ziru Li, Jeyavijayan Rajendran, Yiran Chen. “ModSRAM: Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Large Number Modular Multiplication in SRAM”. Proceedings of the 61st ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2024

  • QCE 2023 Junyao Zhang, Hanrui Wang, Gokul Subramanian Ravi, Frederic T. Chong, Song Han, Frank Mueller, Yiran Chen. “DISQ: Dynamic Iteration Skipping for Variational Quantum Algorithms”. IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), 2023

  • AAMAS 2021 Mingxi Cheng, Junyao Zhang, Chenzhong Yin, Shahin Nazarian, Jyotirmoy Deshmukh, Paul Bogdan. “A General Trust Framework for Multi-Agent Systems”. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS), 2021

  • IV 2021 Mingxi Cheng, Junyao Zhang, Shahin Nazarian, Jyotirmoy Deshmukh, Paul Bogdan. “Trust-Aware Control for Intelligent Transportation Systems” IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), 2021

• Additional Publications

  • Survey “A Survey: Collaborative Hardware and Software Design in the Era of Large Language Models”. IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (CASM)

  • TODAES 2026 Yiyi Lu, Hoi Ian Au, Junyao Zhang, Jingyu Pan, Guanglei Zhou, Yiting Wang, Jingwei Sun, Ang Li, Jianyi Zhang, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “AutoEDA: Enabling EDA Flow Automation through Microservice-Based LLM Agents”. ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES), 2026

  • ASPDAC 2026 Haoxuan Shan, Cong Guo, Chiyue Wei, Feng Cheng, Junyao Zhang, Hai “Helen” Li, Yiran Chen. “Platinum: Path-Adaptable LUT-Based Accelerator Tailored for Low-Bit Weight Matrix Multiplication” Proceedings of the 31th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference, 2026

  • ICCAD 2025 Guanglei Zhou, Chen-Chia Chang, Junyao Zhang, Jingyu Pan, Yiran Chen. “Diffusion-Model-Enhanced Layout Pattern Generation for Sub 3nm DFM”. Proceedings of the 44rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, 2025 (INVITED PAPER)

  • GLSVLSI 2025 Feng Cheng, Tunhou Zhang, Junyao Zhang, Jonathan Ku, Yitu Wang, Xiaoxuan Yang, Yiran Chen. “AutoRAC: Automated Processing-in-Memory Accelerator Design for Recommender Systems”. Proceedings of the Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI, 2025

  • SPIE 2025 Guanglei Zhou, Bhargav Korrapati, Gaurav Rajavendra Reddy, Junyao Zhang, Yiran Chen, Dipto G Thakurta. “Vario: enhance pattern diversity with diffusion model”. DTCO and Computational Patterning IV, 2025

  • ISQED 2025 Arjun Sridhar, Chen-Chia Chang, Junyao Zhang, Yiran Chen. “Improving Routability Prediction via NAS Using a Smooth One-shot Augmented Predictor”. 26th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, 2025

👔 Academic Service

• Journal Reviewer

  • Quantum
  • ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing (TQC)
  • ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES)
  • IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (TAI)

• Conference Service

  • Program Committee Member
    • Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2026)
    • IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE 2025)
  • Artifact Evaluation Committee Member
    • IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA 2026)
    • USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2025)
    • USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC 2025)