ICS Seminar: Sani Nassif
From Circuits to Cancer
Dr. Sani Nassif
IBM Austin Research Lab
Nov. 20 (Tuesday), 4-5pm
ACES 2.402
Abstract:
The human race has invested about a trillion dollars in the development of semiconductor electronics, and our lives have been improved greatly as a result. Smart devices are now taken for granted and permeate every aspect of our existence. The development of such complex devices is extremely difficult and error-prone, thus the IC design community has made large investments in synthesis, simulation, verification, and overall automation to allow such designs to be built. It turns out, happily, that much of this Silicon R&D is applicable to other areas… This talk will be about one such area, namely that of Proton radiation cancer therapy, where a team at IBM, working with researchers at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Research center, have been busy applying knowledge from VLSI to this important area, and producing results that are poised to revolutionize the quality and efficiency of such therapy.
Speaker Bio:
Sani received his Bachelors degree with Honors from the American University of Beirut in 1980, and his Masters and PhD degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1981 and 1985 respectively. He then worked for ten years at Bell Laboratories in the general area of technology CAD, focusing on various aspects of design and technology coupling including device modeling, parameter extraction, worst case analysis, design optimization and circuit simulation. While at Bell Labs, working under Larry Nagel -the original author of Spice, he led a large team in the development of an in-house circuit simulator, named Celerity, which became the main circuit simulation tool at Bell Labs.
In January 1996, he joined the then newly formed IBM Austin Research Laboratory (ARL), which was founded with a specific focus on research for the support of IBM’s Power computer systems. After ten years of management, he stepped down to focus on technical work again, and he is currently working on applying techniques developed in the VLSI-EDA area to IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative.
Sani has authored numerous conference and journal publications, and delivered many tutorials at top conferences. He has received Best Paper awards from TCAD, ICCAD, DAC, ISQED, ICCD and SEMICON, authored invited papers to ISSCC, IEDM, IRPS, ISLPED, HOTCHIPS, and CICC. He has given Keynote and Plenary presentations at Sasimi, ESSCIRC, BMAS, SISPAD, SEMICON, VLSI-SOC, PATMOS, NMI, ASAP, GLVLSI, TAU, and ISVLSI. He is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, a member of the ACM and the AAAS, and an IBM master inventor with more than 50 patents.
Dr. Nassif is the president elect of the IEEE Council on EDA (CEDA), and was the General chair of the ICCAD conference in 2008. He has previously also served on the technical program committee of ICCAD, DAC and ISQED, and on the executive committee of ISPD. He has received the Penrose award (given to one outstanding graduate from the American University of Beirut), the Distinguished Member of Technical Staff award from Bell Labs, two Research Accomplishment Awards from IBM, and the SRC Mahboob-Khan Outstanding Mentor awards from the SRC.
Sani represents IBM on the SRC Science Area Coordinating Committee for CAD and Test, and is the chair for the committee in 2012. He maintains strong ties with academia, and has participated in PhD committees for students from MIT, CMU, Univ. Minnesota, Univ. Texas Austin, UCSB, UCI, Univ. Glasgow, and Univ. Michigan