Brown University professor honored for outstanding technical contributions in energy efficient and reliable electronic systems, nanoelectronics, and nanotechnology
LOUISVILLE, Colo. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — April 24, 2019 — Iris Bahar, Professor of Engineering and Computer Science at Brown University, has been selected as the 2019 recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Award, a prestigious annual honor that recognizes individuals who have significantly helped to advance women in electronic design. The award is named for the late Marie R. Pistilli, former co-founder of DAC, who placed a high value on equality, diversity, and acceptance.
Iris’ outstanding technical contributions have been in the area of energy efficient and reliable electronic system design, from high-performance systems, to embedded multicore and nanoelectronic systems. Her contributions are as impactful as they are diverse, from her early work on efficient representations for logic synthesis using algebraic decision diagrams, to being one of the pioneers in identifying power consumption as the premier constraint for computer architects and system designers, and the more recent work on approximate computing and energy efficient and reliable design using nanoelectronics and emerging technologies.
Iris’ work is included in more than 170 papers published in peer reviewed venues and thousands of citations for her published work. Her research has been continuously funded since 1997 through various industrial and government sources, including the National Science Foundation, DARPA, DoD, SRC, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, and NASA.
In response to the award, Diana Marculescu, David Edward Schramm Professor and past Marie R. Pistilli award recipient, said, “Iris has walked and bridged the boundary between electronic design and computer architecture and has become a leader in both fields. Given Iris’ technical contributions to the field of EDA and her dedication to the goal of advancing the status of women in electronic design, I cannot think of a more deserving recipient for the 2019 Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Achievement Award.”
While Iris’ work has left an indelible mark on the industry, her educational legacy also includes her work with her students, advisees, and mentees. Iris’ contributions to advance the status and representation of women in electronic design has no boundaries. She has been a leader in events that promote and advance the participation of women in electronic design and computer architecture. She has co-organized (with Margaret Martonosi of Princeton University and past Marie Pistilli award recipient) the CRA-W/CDC Discipline- Specific Computer Architecture Summer Workshop series, the first in a series of workshops supported by the Computing Research Association that enable women and underrepresented minorities advance in computing disciplines. She has continued to organize and participate in similar events that promote diversity in computing (from high school girls, to mid-career professionals) over the past several years. Recently, she served on the Executive Committees of ACM SIGDA, and the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD) and as General Chair of the International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS).
Iris received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Before entering the Ph.D. program at CU-Boulder, she worked at Digital Equipment Corporation as a senior hardware designer, responsible for parts of the circuit and microarchitectural implementation in one of their processor chips. She has been on the faculty at Brown University in the School of Engineering since 1996 and is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM.
The Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Award will be presented to Iris Bahar during the 56th DAC General Session Awards presentation on Monday, June 3, 2019 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV.
About the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Award
Women have made important contributions and strides in the semiconductor industry for over 20 years. To recognize those who have dedicated time and effort toward these achievements, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) Executive Committee presents an annual award to honor an individual who has made significant contributions to help women advance in the field of EDA technology. The award is named for DAC’s former organizer, the late Marie Pistilli, who worked hard to further the advancement of women in engineering. Marie passed away in November 2015, but her memory and her legacy live on through her namesake award.
For a list of previous recipients of the award and to obtain details about how to nominate a candidate for 2020, please visit https://dac.com/content/women-electronic-design.
About DAC
The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is recognized as the premier
event for the design of electronic circuits and systems, and for
electronic design automation (EDA) and silicon solutions. A diverse
worldwide community representing more than 1,000 organizations attends
each year, represented by system designers and architects, logic and
circuit designers, validation engineers, CAD managers, senior managers
and executives to researchers and academicians from leading
universities. Close to 60 technical sessions selected by a committee of
electronic design experts offer information on recent developments and
trends, management practices and new products, methodologies and
technologies. A highlight of DAC is its exhibition and suite area with
approximately 175 of the leading and emerging EDA, silicon, intellectual
property (IP) and design services providers. The conference is sponsored
by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on
Design Automation (ACM SIGDA), and the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineer’s Council on Electronic Design Automation (IEEE
CEDA).
