The ACM's Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) will celebrate two significant anniversaries at the 44th Design Automation Conference (DAC). This year marks the 20th SIGDA/DAC University Booth, a venue for the university community from around the world to demonstrate EDA tools, design projects, and instructional materials at the conference. To commemorate the 20th edition, Mentor Graphics Corp. has sponsored a special University Booth redesign. SIGDA also will host its 10th annual ACM SIGDA Ph.D. Forum at DAC on Tuesday, June 5. Aimed at strengthening ties between academia and industry, this competitive poster session provides Ph.D. students an opportunity to present and discuss their dissertation research with people in the EDA community. The 44th DAC is being held June 4-8 at the San Diego Convention Center.
"The creation of the Ph.D. Forum by Soha Hassoun was a major contribution to SIGDA's relationship to our members. It transformed our mundane 'member meeting' into a major scholarly and social event at DAC," said Steve Levitan, general chair of 44th DAC executive committee and previous chair of SIGDA. "The Ph.D. Forum celebrates the work of the best Ph.D. students in our field and, in so doing, gives visibility for SIGDA to the EDA community as a whole."
"The SIGDA/DAC University Booth highlights software produced by graduate students at the universities. Many of the companies at the time, and even now, grew out of new ideas coming out of universities," said Don Thomas, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and 24th DAC Program Chair, one of the University Booth founders, along with Dan Gajski, Janie Irwin, and Chuck Shaw.
