Principal Investigator
Jaydeep Kulkarni [CV] [Google Scholar]
(S’03–M’09–SM’15) Jaydeep Kulkarni received a B.E. degree from the University of Pune, India, in 2002, an M. Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 2004, and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2009. From 2009-2017, he worked as a Research Scientist at Intel Circuit Research Lab in Hillsboro, OR. He is an associate professor in the Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a fellow of Silicon Labs endowed chair in electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Kulkarni has filed 39 patents, published two book chapters, and more than 130 papers in refereed journals and conferences. His research focuses on Integrated circuits and systems, specifically machine learning hardware accelerators, low-power digital designs, in-memory computing, DTCO/STCO for emerging nano-devices, heterogeneous and 3D integrated circuits, hardware security, cryogenic computing, and superconducting electronics.
Dr. Kulkarni received the Best M. Tech Student award from IISc Bangalore, Intel Foundation Ph.D. fellowship award, Purdue ECE Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems Best Paper Award, the SRC Outstanding Industrial Liaison award, Micron Foundation Faculty Awards, Intel Rising Star Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, SRC Innovator Award, UT ECE Junior Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, and IEEE Best Associate Editor Award.
Dr. Kulkarni has participated in technical program committees of the VLSI Symposium, CICC, ASSCC, DAC, ICCAD, ISLPED, AICAS, and VLSI Design conferences. He has been a Distinguished Industrial Lecturer for the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society. He has been a TPC Co-Chair and General Co-Chair for 2017 and 2018 ISLPED, respectively, and a TPC Co-Chair for the 2023 VLSI Design Conference, India. He has also been an associate editor for IEEE Solid-State Circuit Letters, IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems -II. He is a distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Electron Device Society and IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He is a senior IEEE, ACM, and the US National Academy of Inventors member.
Ph.D. Students
13. Anup Kedilaya (Joined Fall 2024) [Linkedin]
Anup received a BE degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from BNM Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India. After BE, he worked for a year as a project assistant at DESE, IISc, working on Networked Embedded systems. In 2019, he received an MS in ECE from the University of Minnesota. From 2019 to 2024, he worked as a physical design and design automation engineer at Apple, working on CPU and GPU subsystems. His research interests include physical design and design automation efforts for emerging technologies and heterogeneous and 3D integrated circuits.
12. Nishant Gupta (Joined Spring 2025) [Linkedin]
Nishant is a part-time Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Integrated Circuits and Systems track) at The University of Texas at Austin. He is currently employed as a Physical Design Engineer at Apple. Nishant earned his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UT Austin in Spring 2024 and his B.E. in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (Pilani campus), India, in 2021. Before pursuing his master’s degree, Nishant worked as a Guest Researcher at TU Dresden, Germany, focusing on hardware security for a year. His research interests include Design-Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO) for emerging technologies, hardware security, physical design, and heterogeneous integration. Nishant enjoys playing badminton, strumming the guitar, and exploring new travel destinations outside academics and work.
11. Saroj Sathpathy (Joined Fall 2022)
Saroj is a part-time PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He received his M.S.E.E. degree from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has extensive industry experience in CPU custom circuit design at ARM, LSI (now Avago), Nokia, and Qualcomm. Now, he is a senior engineer at Intel Atom CPU circuit group, working on advanced memory circuit research and design. He has filed one patent and has published 11 technical papers. His academic research interests include circuit reliability and security, memory circuit design, and circuit applications of beyond-CMOS devices.
10. Sumanth Nara Karanth (Joined Fall 2021)
Sumanth completed his Bachelor’ degree in Electronics and Communications from RVCE, Bangalore, in 2017. After his bachelor’s degree, he worked on precision low-power data converters, MEMS-based sensors, and battery chargers as an applications engineer at Analog Devices, India, for 2 years. Later, he joined The Microwave Lab, IISC, as a research assistant, where his work included studying the effects of High-Power Microwaves on electronic devices and circuits. He graduated with an MS from the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is currently working as an analog and mixed-signal design engineer at Skyworks Solutions as continuing his Ph.D. studies as a part-time student. His current research focuses on hardware security and mixed-signal circuits. Besides electronics, he enjoys reading Manga, Travelling and Sketching.
9. Chieh-Pu Kevin Lo (Joined Fall 2022) [Linkedin]
Chieh-Pu Kevin Lo is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, ECE ICS track. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Before he joined UT, he worked as a senior memory engineer/designer with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Hsinchu, for over 5.5 years. During TSMC time, he experienced non-volatile memory IP design (MRAM, ReRAM, Flash, etc.) and digital-based computing-in-memory design. His research interests include emerging memories circuit design and computing-in-memory circuit design on volatile and non-volatile memories for different computing applications. In his spare time, he likes watching movies and TV series, hiking with friends, and traveling to various places.
8. Xiuhao Zhang (Joined Spring 2022)
Xiuhao is a PhD student at the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin. He graduated with his Bachelor of Engineering with Honors in Electronic Information Engineering from ShanghaiTech University in 2020. As an exchange student, he spent his final undergraduate year at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley, affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, under the Materials Sciences Division, Energy Sciences Area. At ShanghaiTech University, he got involved in Cryogenic CMOS device and circuit modeling and testing. At UC Berkeley, he got involved in the fabrication and testing of low-temperature-grown high-performance flexible devices and circuits. He also graduated with his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from UT Austin in 2022. Moving onto PhD, his current research focuses on memory design and Design Technology Co-Optimization. Outside of school, he loves playing and watching soccer, traveling and gaming with friends.
7. Mengtian Yang (Joined Spring 2022)
Mengtian is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in the ACSES Track of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the ACM-honored Program at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in 2021. Before joining CRL, he was doing research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an intern student in HAN-Lab where he focused on ML accelerators and hardware-software co-design. His current research interests are compute-in-memory accelerators for novel computing applications such as Combinatorial Optimizations, Machine Learning, and so on. Besides circuit research, he is also a good programmer and loves writing codes and building fancy systems.
6. Juhan Ahn (Joined Fall 2021)
Juhan is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He completed his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and master’s degree in semiconductor materials and devices engineering at Korea University in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Prior to joining UT, he worked as a device-TCAD engineer at SK Hynix until 2021, researching NAND FLASH and DRAM transistors. His current research interest is design technology co-optimization(DTCO) for next-generation memories.
5. Hema Ramamurthy (Joined Fall 2021)
Hema is a part-time Ph.D. candidate at The University of Texas at Austin, ECE/ ICS track. Hema has extensive industry experience leading SoC and core memory RTL-GDS flow (SRAM, CAM, Register file, Compiled memory), custom circuit and low-power library design, technology design enablement for Advanced SRAM Technology, technology risk evaluation, SRAM cell design, reliability analysis and qualification on bulk, SOI/FDSOI and FinFET CMOS technologies with over 22 first-time silicon successes. Her industry experience include DTCO, PDK leadership, physical design, functional and formal verification and, logic design at Motorola, Freescale and Globalfoundries. Currently she leads the core chiplet Power analysis, CAM memory implementation and Low-power library design in the Systems Group at IBM Austin. She has 12 patents (2 pending) and has published 7 technical papers. Her current research focuses on emerging memory design, Machine learning models for chip design optimization, and power-efficient library design. Her other interests include hiking, running, travel and reading.
4. Yipeng Wang (Joined Fall 2021)
Yipeng is a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his bachelor degree with outstanding honor from Beihang University (Bejing Univ of A. & A.). Prior to joining CRL, He was a research assistant in Tsinghua University, where he worked on ML accelerators, SRAM in-memory computing and RISCV SoCs with NICS group. His current research interests are Compute-in-memory accelerators, Compute-in-memory general-purpose processors, and architecture based on novel technology. He’s also a cycling enthusiast and drummer.
3. Sirish Oruganti (Joined Fall 2021) [LinkedIn]
Sirish is a Ph.D. student at The University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering, ICS track. He graduated with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Delhi Technological University (formerly Delhi College of Engineering) in 2018. Prior to joining CRL, he was an Analog Design Engineer in the High-Speed Signal Conditioning group at Texas Instruments India till June 2021. His current research focuses on Hardware Security. Apart from building circuits, he loves to teach, and enjoys cooking and driving to new places at leisure.
2. Saikat Chakraborty (Joined Fall 2021)
Saikat is a PhD student at Electrical and Computer Engineering in the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and Master’s degree in Microelectronics specialization from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, where he worked on reliability (NBTI) study and scaling of FinFETs for cutting-edge technology node. Prior to joining UT, he worked with TD-Device modelling group and TD-HV group at Globalfoundries for over 3 years, experiencing FET model extraction and development focusing on sensing/memory applications in 40nm tech node as well as design, process development, fabrication and characterization of Ultra-high voltage semiconductor devices, recognized with Globalfoundries Excellence Award. His research interests lie in modelling and development of emerging nano-scale devices, novel memory technologies low power and low cost IOT applications.
1. Stafford Hutchins (Joined Fall 2019) [LinkedIn]
Stafford Hutchins is a graduate student of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated with a BSEE from UT Austin, and is now pursuing his masters and Ph.D. part time while working at Intel Austin, in Advanced Design Group. His research interests are in advanced memory circuit techniques, and emerging applications of mixed signal circuits and novel electronic devices. In his free time he enjoys the outdoors, vegan cooking, and working on home improvement projects with his wife and two cats.