Zhengyuan Shi (石正源, Stone) will join the Microelectronics Thrust of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou (HKUST-GZ) as Assistant Professor in Jan. 2027. I’m now a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), supervised by Prof. Qiang Xu. Before that, I was Visiting Scholar at University of Bremen, work with Prof. Rolf Drechsler. I obtained Ph.D. degree from CUHK in 2026 and B.Eng. degree with presidential scholarship from Shandong University in 2021. I have published more than 40 papers at top-tier conferences and journals, with 1 Best Paper Award (DAC26, as corresponding author), 1 Best Poster Award (ASPDAC26, as first author) and 2 Best Paper Nomination awards. I have also served as TPC member for several conferences and reviewer for journals.
My research focuses on AI/LLM for Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and Constraint Programming (CP).
I'm recruiting 2-3 PhD students at HKUST-GZ. PhD admission is available for 2027 Spring and 2027 Fall. Red Bird MPhil (RBM) students, undergraudate students, visiting students are also welcome. Contact: zyshi21[AT]cse.cuhk.edu.hk / zshi0616[AT]gmail.com🔥 News
- 2026.09: Two papers were accepted by ASPDAC 2027!
- 2026.07: Our paper Miter-Aware LUT Mapping: Aligning Structure for Efficient Logic Equivalence Checking was selected as Best Paper in DAC! As co-corresponding author, this is also my first time guiding a junior PhD student. Congratulations to Jiaying! 🎉🎉
- 2026.07: Two papers were accepted by ICCAD 2026!
- 2026.02: Two papers were accepted by DAC 2026. But I may not attend the conference this year 😭.
- 2026.01: I was honored to receive the Best Poster Award at SRF of ASPDAC 2026.
- 2025.09: Two papers were accepted by ASPDAC 2026 (I can’t wait to the magical visit to HK Disneyland~).
- 2025.08: Our SAT solver Kissat-CURE wins the 3rd prize in SAT Competition Main Track.
- 2025.06: Two papers DeepCell and MMCircuitEval were accepted by International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD).
- 2025.06: I was selected to attend CP/SAT Doctoral Program and present our work Circuit Learning for Boolean Satisfiability Problems. Association for Constraint Programming (ACP) will cover all the travel cost, thanks for the support!
- 2025.05: Our paper DynamicSAT: Dynamic Configuration Tuning for SAT Solving was accepted by International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP).
- 2025.04 My poster of my PhD topic Large Circuit Model: Towards AI-Native EDA Methodology was accpeted by Design Automation Conference (DAC) PhD Forum with 1,000$ travel grant support.
- 2025.02: Our paper Logic Optimization Meets SAT: A Novel Framework for Circuit-SAT Solving was accepted by Design Automation Conference (DAC).
- 2025.01: Our paper DeepSeq2: Enhanced Sequential Circuit Learning with Disentangled Representations Link was nominated as Best Paper in ASPDAC. 🎉🎉
- 2024.11: Our paper about Large Circuit Model, an AI-native foundation model for EDA, was published in Science China Information Science 微信公众号
🧐 Research
Circuit Representation Learning:
- Netlist Encoder and Its Applications: DeepGate Family @ ICCAD23 for combinational circuit, DeepSeq Family @ DAC26 for sequential circuit.
- Multimodal / Multiview Learning: DeepCell @ ICCAD25, MixGate @ ICCAD26
From Boolean Satisfiability to Logic Verification:
- Problem Reformulation (Preprocessing): LOMeetSAT @ DAC25, Map4LEC @ DAC26
- AI-driven Heuristics (Inprocessing): DynamicSAT @ CP25, CASCAD
Cross-stage Design and Optimization:
- Physical-Aware Design: LevelSyn @ ICCAD26
- LLM-driven Design: MMCircuitEval @ ICCAD25
📝 Publications
Publication Summary: DAC+ICCAD x12, DATE+ASPDAC x8
Best Paper Award x1: DAC26
Best Poster Award x1: ASPDAC26
Best Paper Nomination x2: ASPDAC25, DAC22
Full publication list is available on Google Scholar.
💼 Works
- 2027.01 - Now, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou.
- 2026.03 - 2026.12, PostDoc, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
- 2026.05 - 2026.08, Visiting Scholar, University of Bremen.
📖 Educations
- 2021.08 - 2026.03, Ph.D., Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
- 2017.09 - 2021.06, B.Eng., School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University.
🎙️ Invited Talks
- 2026.01, Learning Circuit Intuition for Smart Design Automation, IEEE CEDA Guangzhou Chapter.
- 2025.11, Beyond LLMs: Making Foundation Model Understand Circuit, Foundation Models and EDA Workshop, ICCAD 2025.
- 2025.09, 大电路模型：进展与展望, CCF ADL164《AI自动芯片设计》.
😘😘😘
My love 💗: Yiran Liu, Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau.
