SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award

Predoctoral Achievement Awards 

For a small number of promising graduate students, the IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award provides a $1,000 honorarium as well as other expenses incurred by the awardee.

Applicants must be members of the IEEE and the Solid-State Circuits Society, have completed at least one year of study in a PhD program in the area of solid state circuits, and not have received a PhD degree in the area of solid state circuits prior to the final application deadline. Awards are made on the basis of academic record and promise, quality of publications, and a graduate study program well matched to the charter of SSCS.  Prior winners of the Predoctoral Achievement Award will not be eligible.  No more than two awards will be granted in a given year to students of one Principal Advisor.

The 2022-2023 application period is now closed. Please check back around September 2023 for an opportunity to apply for a 2023-2024 award.

2021-2022 Predoctoral Achievement Award Recipients

Ibrahim Abdo- Tokyo Inst of Technology

Ibrahim Abdo received the B.Sc. in Electronics Engineering from Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT), Amman, Jordan in 2014. In 2015, he was awarded the Japanese government scholarship, and joined Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he gained his M.Eng. degree in Physical Electronics in 2017. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology. His research interests include high data rate CMOS mm-wave and sub-THz wireless transceiver circuit design and phased-array implementation. Mr. Abdo serves as a reviewer for IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), and IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (T-MTT).

Chen Chen- UT Dallas

Chen Chen received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China, in 2014, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2017. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Integrated Power Laboratory in the University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.

She was a Design Engineering Intern with Analog Devices in the summer of 2019, where she focused on the design and evaluation of buck-boost converters. Her current research interests include power management integrated circuits, hybrid power converter topologies and methodologies, and zero-voltage-switching techniques.

Chen's work resulted in several first-authored IEEE publications at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), etc. She was nominated for the best student paper award in the 2020 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference. She is a recipient of the Student Designer Award by Analog Devices Inc.

Yingying Fan- Rice

Archisman Ghosh- Purdue

Archisman Ghosh (Student Member, IEEE) received his B.E. degree in Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, India in 2017 and he is currently pursuing Ph.D. in Purdue University where he is a recipient of prestigious ECE Meissner fellowship (2019-20) as an incoming graduate student. His research interests include digital soc design and hardware security. His most recent works resulted in several publications in IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Custom Integrated Circuit Conference (CICC), and Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE). Prior to his Ph.D., Mr. Ghosh has worked in Samsung Semiconductor India R&D for 2 years. He has interned with Intel Labs, Oregon. He has been serving as a Primary Reviewer for multiple reputed journals and conferences, including IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID) and Wireless Personal Communication (WPC) (Springer). He has also served as a secondary reviewer in multiple reputed conferences including DAC, DATE, IEEE HOST, ICCAD. 

Jiang Gong-  TU Delft 

Jiang Gong received the B.Sc. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Jilin University, Changchun, China, in 2015. He received the M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in microelectronics from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in November 2017. From 2016 to 2017, He was a Student Intern with IMEC, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where he worked on low-power ring-oscillator-based fractional-N injection-locked digital PLL design for IoT applications.

He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, focusing on high-spectral-purity and wide-tuning-range cryogenic frequency synthesizers for wireless, wireline, and quantum computing applications. His Ph.D. research resulted in several publications in the Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), and International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS).

Han Hao- UPenn

His research interest lies in integrated circuits design for a wide range of applications including brain-machine interface, sensor interface, human body communication transceivers, high-speed silicon photonic transceivers, and near-infrared biosensing. He is the first author of multiple SSCS journal and conference publications on different systems in various frequency regimes from sub-kHz to optical including JSSC, TMTT, TBioCAS, RFIC, and CICC. He serves as a reviewer for IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society and IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference. He is the recipient of Scholarship for Academic Excellence (from HUST), Graduate Award for Best Master’s Thesis (from UPenn ESE), and the 2020 IEEE RFIC Symposium best student paper award (1st place).

Yan He- Rice

Yan He received his B.S. degree in electronic science and technology from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2018. He received the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University, Houston, TX, in 2021, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree. He is a member of the Secure and Intelligent Micro-Systems (SIMS) Lab supervised by Prof. Kaiyuan Yang.

His research interests include mixed-signal integrated circuits design for power management and hardware security. He was an intern with NVIDIA, USA, where he worked on a security-related project during 2021. He has (co-)first-authored three papers in International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), and one in Custom Integrated Circuit Conference (CICC). He received the 2021 CICC Best Paper Award.

Shoubhik Karmakar- TU Delft

Shoubhik Karmakar received the B.E. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Goa, India, in 2012, and the M.Sc. degree in microelectronics from the Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2017. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree, in collaboration with Goodix Semiconductors, at Delft University of Technology. His Ph.D. research is focused on high-performance class-D amplifiers for various applications.

Between 2014 to 2015, he was a Research Associate with the VLSI Group, IIT Madras, Chennai, India. Since 2016 he has been with the Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory at the Delft University of Technology. His current research interests include high-performance class-D audio amplifiers, energy-efficient data converters, and precision analog circuits. He has served as a reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits. 

Juyeop Kim- KAIST

 Juyeop Kim (Student Member, IEEE) was born in Changwon, South Korea, in 1994. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, South Korea, in 2017 and 2020, respectively. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea. His current research interests include CMOS analog/mixed IC designs, especially ultra-low jitter frequency synthesizers for 5G mobile systems. 

Keun-Mok Kim- KAIST

Keun-Mok Kim received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea, in 2016 and 2018, respectively, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree. His current research interests include ultra-low-power radios with a wake-up receiver for various applications, such as internet-of-things (IoT), low-power wide-area network (LPWAN), biomedical, and sub-THz, based on low-power CMOS circuit design. His research results are presented in IEEE conferences and journals as a first author, including Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC), and European Solid-State Circuit Conference (ESSCIRC). He was the recipient of the Minister of Trade, Industry & Energy Award at the 21st Korea Semiconductor Design Competition (2020). He has served as a reviewer for IEEE JSSC and IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (TMTT) from 2020.

Changuk Lee- Yonsei University

 Changuk Lee received the B.S. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2016, where he is currently pursuing the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering advised by Prof. Youngcheol Chae. His current research interests include continuous-time delta-sigma modulator, high-precision analog circuits, low-noise sensor interfaces, and miniaturized wireless neural interface. His Ph.D. research resulted in several publications in Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Symposium On VLSI Circuits (SOVC), Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC), and Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (ASSCC).

He received the Bronze Prize (2018) and Sliver Prize (2020) in the Samsung Human-Tech Paper Award in Circuit Design hosted by Samsung Electronics, the IEEE SSCS Student Travel Grant Award (2021-2022), and the IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award (2021-2022).

Naga Sasikanth Mannem- Georgia Tech

Naga Sasikanth Mannem (S’18) received the B.Tech. & M.Tech. degrees in electronics and electrical communication engineering with specialization in VLSI from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT KGP), Kharagpur, India, in 2018. He is currently pursuing the PhD degree in electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, where he is a member of Georgia Tech Electronics and Micro-Systems Lab (GEMS Lab) supervised by Prof. Hua Wang. His current research interests include RF/mm-Wave integrated circuits and systems, with a focus on addressing various challenges and issues associated with phased array systems.

Mr. Mannem serves as a reviewer for IEEE Journal on Solid State Circuits (JSSC), IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (TMTT), and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems. Mr. Mannem was a recipient of the ISSCC Analog Devices Inc. Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2021. He was a recipient of IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC) best student paper award (2nd place) at RFIC 2021 and a co-recipient of best student paper award 2nd place at IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS), 2021.

Inho Park- Korea University

Inho Park (S’16) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Korea University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2016, where he is currently pursuing the combined M.S. and Ph.D. degrees.

He has been working on power management IC, especially high-voltage silicon-based power converter design, low-power CMOS analog circuits design, energy-harvesting systems, battery charger, linear power regulator, switched inductive/capacitive converter, and hybrid dc-dc converters. His work resulted in several publications in Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), and Symposium on VLSI Circuits (VLSIC), etc. Mr. Park was a recipient of Qualcomm Innovation Award in 2016 and 2017, and a recipient of 25th Samsung Humantech Paper Award by Samsung Electronics in 2019.

Sujin Park- KAIST

She was a Visiting Graduate Student with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, from 2019 to 2020. She was a recipient of the Student-Research Preview Outstanding Poster Award at ISSCC 2019, Rising Stars Award at IEEE SSCS Women in Circuits 2020, and Student Travel Grant Award at ISSCC 2020.   

Masoud Pashaeifar- TU Delft

Masoud Pashaeifar (S’20) received the B.Sc. degree from the Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran, in 2011, and the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, circuits and systems, from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, in 2013. He was a research assistant at the Low-Power High-Performance Nano-Systems Lab, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, working on quality estimation and optimizing approximate adders for digital signal processing applications. For over four years, he was the Head of the Hardware Research Group in the Bakhtar Communication Company, Tehran, Iran. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering with the Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. His research interests include RF/mm-wave transceivers for 5G cellular applications, mainly focusing on highly efficient yet linear power amplifiers for phased array systems.

Mr. Pashaeifar serves as a Reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC) and the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems (TCAS-I). He is a recipient of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Predoctoral Achievement Award for 2021-2022.

Corentin Pochet- UC San Diego

His research interests include designing low-power analog front-end circuits and time-based analog-to-digital converters for internet-of-things, wearable, and biomedical applications. His PhD research has resulted in several publications in Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS). He has served as a reviewer for Transactions on circuits and systems I (TCASI) and Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS). Mr. Pochet was a recipient of the Belgian American Education Foundation (B.A.E.F) Henri Benedictus Fellowship in 2016.

Junjun Qiu- Tokyo Inst of Technology

Junjun Qiu (S’19) received B.Sc degree in electrical and electronic engineering from East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, in 2016. She received the M.E. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2018. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and electronic engineering with Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

She was focusing on fully synthesizable digital baseband circuit design for Sub-GHz wireless transceiver system. Her current research interests include high performance phase locked loop design and mixed signal wireless communication system design for Bluetooth low energy.

Ms. Qiu was a recipient of the IEEE SSCS Student Travel Grant Award in 2020.

Sam Razavian- UCLA

Sam Razavian received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2016, and the M.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, in 2019, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree. He was an RFIC Design Intern with Qualcomm Inc., San Jose, CA, USA, in 2020 and 2021, where he worked on PA and Full-duplex systems for RF applications.

His current research focus is on millimeter-wave and terahertz transmitters and receivers for different applications, including broadband sensing, hyperspectral imaging, and high-speed Communication. His research has resulted in various publications in International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), International Microwave Symposium (IMS), BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (BCICTS) and IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (TMTT). 

Thije Rooijers- TU Delft

Thije Rooijers received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2013. He received the M.Sc. degree in microelectronics from the same university in 2016. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at Delft University of Technology, focusing on reducing the imperfections of dynamic offset compensated amplifiers.

Mr. Rooijers was a recipient of the ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2018, the ProRISC Best Oral Presentation Award in 2019, the ProRISC Best Poster Award in 2021 and the Silver price at the Huawei Student Design Contest 2021.

Hooman Saeidi- Princeton

Hooman Saeidi received the Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2017 and Master of Arts from Princeton University, Princeton, in Electrical Engineering in 2019.

He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University and his research interests include Reconfigurability in Millimeter-wave Systems and EM Interfaces, Programmable Chip-Scale Millimeter-wave and THz Circuits, and Sub-THz/THz Power Generation Using Silicon and III-V Technologies.

He was the recipient of several awards including ISSCC 2020 analog devices Outstanding Student Designer Award, Princeton University ECE department teaching award, Princeton University ECE department Early Career Ph.D. Award, Princeton University Yan Huo *94 Graduate Fellowship, and IRMMW 2021 best student paper award, 2nd place.

Dragan Simic- KU Leuven

Dragan Simic was born in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia, in 1993. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, in 2015 and 2016, respectively. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree with the MICAS Research Group, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

From 2015 to 2016, he was an Intern with the NovelIC, Belgrade, where he worked on analog and RF IC design for integrated sensor systems. Since 2016, he has been with the MICAS Research Group, KU Leuven, as a research assistant. His current research interests include millimeter-wave and terahertz (THz) circuits for communication and sensing systems.

Mr. Simic serves as a Reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC) and the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I (TCASI).

Arian Hashemi Talkhooncheh- CalTech

Arian Hashemi Talkhooncheh (S’15) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2015, and the M.Sc. degree from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA, in 2016, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering, advised by Azita Emami. 

Arian was a research intern with NVIDIA Circuit Research Group in fall 2020. His current research interests include analog/mixed-signal IC design for high-speed optical interconnects (silicon photonic transceivers) and biomedical applications (biofuel-cell energy harvesters and low-power biosensors).

His research has resulted in first-authored IEEE publication at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), and IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC). He was a recipient of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) Best Student Paper Award in 2020. He holds the National Gold Medal and an International Silver Medal of the Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2010 and 2011.

Thierry Tambe- Harvard

Thierry Tambe is a 4th year Electrical Engineering PhD candidate at Harvard University advised by Prof. Gu-Yeon Wei and Prof. David Brooks. His current research interests focus on designing energy-efficient and high-performance algorithms, hardware accelerators and systems for machine learning and natural language processing in particular. He also bears a keen interest in agile SoC design methodologies.

Prior to debuting his doctoral studies, Mr. Tambe was an engineer at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA designing various analog/mixed-signal architectures for high-bandwidth memory and peripheral interfaces on Xeon and Xeon-Phi HPC SoCs. He received a B.S. in 2010 and M.Eng. in 2012 in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.

Mr. Tambe is a 2021 recipient of the highly competitive NVIDIA Graduate PhD Fellowship and has received the 2020 best paper award at the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference for his work on hardware/software co-design for neural network quantization. Additionally, he has published several papers on energy efficient hardware support for AI applications at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits, and the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO). 

Zhaowen Wang- Columbia

Zhaowen Wang received the B.Eng. degree in electronics and information engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2017. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. His research interests include clocking for wireline communications and optical link design. He has published several papers on wireline clocking techniques in IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), and at IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

Mr. Wang was a Millimeter-Wave ASIC research intern with Nokia Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, USA, in the 2019 summer, and received the Nokia Bell Labs Innovation Project Award. He was the recipient of the Wei Family Foundation Fellowship in 2017, EE Department Master of Science Award of Excellence in 2019, and the ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2021.

Shanshan Xie- UT Austin

Shanshan Xie received the B.S degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Worcester, MA, USA in 2018 and she is currently pursuing the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), Austin, TX, USA. Her research interests include mix-signal design for compute-in-memory techniques, machine learning accelerator and annealing processors.

She was an intern with Analog Devices, Wilmington, MA, USA, and with Texas Instrument Corporation, Dallas, TX, USA where she was involved in programmable gain instrumentation amplifier, ECG heart rate monitor, CAN isolation products. She was a recipient of the Cadence Women in Technology Scholarship from Cadence in 2020.

Bingzheng Yang- UESTC

Bingzheng Yang received the B.E. degree (with honor) in microelectronics from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2016, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in microelectronics and solid-state electronics.

His research interests include digital-assisted RF/microwave/millimeter-wave phased-array transmitter and RF/microwave/millimeter-wave on-chip passive circuit.

Mr. Yang was a recipient of the 2021 IEEE MTT-Society Graduate Fellowship Award. He serves as a reviewer of IEEE Microwaves and Wireless Component Letter and IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation.

Joanne Tan Si Ying- University of Singapore

Joanne Si Ying Tan (Student Member, IEEE) received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2018 and 2020, respectively, where she is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her current research interest focuses on low-power temperature sensing systems.

Ms. Tan was a recipient/co-recipient of the 2021–2022 IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award, IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2020 Demonstration Session Certificate of Recognition (Demonstration Award) and ISSCC 2020 Student Travel Grant Award.

Zhanghao Yu- Rice

Zhanghao Yu received the B.E. degree in Integrated Circuit Design and Integrated System from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in 2016, and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, in 2018. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, Houston, TX, advised by Prof. Kaiyuan Yang.  

His research interests include analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits design for bioelectronics, power management, low-power communication, and security. He has (co-)first-authored five papers in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS), International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), and Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). He was a recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 2021 CICC as the first author and a co-recipient of the Best Student Paper Award Finalist at the 2019 CICC. 

Past Predoctoral Achievement Award Recipients

Predoctoral Fellowship Award Recipients