An Interview With Professor Jason Cong
In September 2023, the EiC of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, Yiran Chen, and Associate Editor Fan Chen had a great chance to interview Professor Jason Cong, a world-renowned distinguished scholar in electronic design automation (EDA) and next-generation computing. This interview comprises six questions that explore various facets of his distinguished career. We trust that our CAS readers will find this conversation enlightening and enjoyable! Jason Cong is the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Excellence Professor at the UCLA Computer Science Department (and a former Department Chair), with joint appointment from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He is the Director of both the Center for Domain-Specific Computing (CDSC) and the VLSI Architecture, Synthesis, and Technology (VAST) Laboratory. His research interests include novel architectures and compilation for customizable computing, synthesis of VLSI circuits and systems, and quantum computing. He has over 500 publications in these areas, including 18 best paper awards, and four papers in the FPGA and Reconfigurable Computing Hall of Fame. He and his former students cofounded AutoESL, which developed the most widely used high-level synthesis tool for FPGAs (renamed to Vivado HLS and Vitis HLS after Xilinx's acquisition). A member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and the National Academy of Inventors, he is also the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Robert Noyce Medal for fundamental contributions to electronic design automation and FPGA design methods.