Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) proudly announces its 2025 Award Winners, celebrating outstanding contributions in semiconductor research, advocacy, and technology innovation. These awards recognize professionals and university researchers who have significantly advanced the industry and SRC’s mission.

SRC Champion Award

The SRC Champion Award honors individuals who demonstrate extraordinary commitment to advocating for SRC. The 2025 recipient, Dr. Carlos Diaz (TSMC), is recognized for his extraordinary commitment to advancing SRC’s mission in both research and education.

Carlos joined Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in 1998. He was responsible for the technology pathfinding stages of 10nm and 5nm technology nodes and led the research stage of 2nm technology. Since 2018, he has focused on TSMC’s long-term pre-competitive research efforts. Carlos’s advocacy has helped secure substantial annual support for crucial research and workforce development programs such as JUMP/nCORE, GRC, and JUMP 2.0/REU, enabling collaborative innovation across the U.S. and Taiwan.

Now Senior Director in Research and Development, Diaz has led a distinguished career with more than 100 technical papers and over 240 US patents. An IEEE Fellow, Diaz has been honored many times in his career, including the 2016 IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award. Congratulations, Carlos!

SRC Aristotle Award

Recognizing faculty whose commitment to student education has made a lasting impact on SRC members, the 2025 Aristotle Award goes to Professor Gregory Parsons (North Carolina State University). Prof. Parsons is internationally recognized for his advances in surface reaction engineering, particularly in thin film deposition, etching, and patterning for advanced electronic materials and devices. His work has elevated atomic-scale synthesis and processing, including reaction mechanisms for ALD, ALE, ASD, MLD, and related techniques.

Since the mid-1990s, Dr. Parsons has guided more than 50 PhD graduates, many supported through SRC research and education development programs. He fosters a collaborative research culture advancing surface chemical processes essential for future electronics and advanced materials. Prof. Parsons co-founded the AVS Atomic Layer Deposition Conference in 2001, now the field’s leading ALD forum, welcoming over 1,000 attendees in 2025. His leadership has shaped generations of researchers who now lead at top technology companies, national labs, and academic institutions. Prof. Parsons is a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, recipient of the prestigious ALD Innovation Award, and a member of NC State’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers. Congratulations, Professor Parsons!

Rama Divakaruni Technical Excellence Award

In 2025, SRC renamed its longstanding Technical Excellence Award to honor Rama Divakaruni, a visionary leader and mentor in the semiconductor industry. The Rama Divakaruni Technical Excellence Award recognizes research of exceptional value to SRC members, celebrating innovative contributions that significantly advance the productivity and competitiveness of the semiconductor sector.

The 2025 awardee, Professor Shimeng Yu (Georgia Institute of Technology), is recognized for pioneering system-technology co-optimization (STCO) and developing the NeuroSim simulator. His work models emerging memory technologies and advances efficient AI hardware design, bridging theory and practical implementation in collaboration with leading semiconductor companies. Dr. Yu’s innovations continue to shape next-generation computing. He is currently Theme Leader of two SRC/DARPA JUMP 2.0 projects on intelligent memory/storage and heterogeneous/monolithic 3D integration.

Prof. Yu’s research interests are semiconductor devices and integrated circuits for AI hardware and 3D stacked systems. He has published over 500 research papers, cited more than 35,000 times, and holds an H-index of 85—a measure of both productivity and impact in his field.

Yu’s laudable awards include several new and young faculty awards as well as awards recognizing his research acumen, including the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer (2021), the IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer (2022), and Intel Outstanding Researcher Award (2023). He is an IEEE Fellow and actively participates in several flagship conferences. Congratulations, Professor Yu!

Young Faculty Award

The Young Faculty Award spotlights rising researchers who enrich SRC’s research agenda. The 2025 recipient, Professor Priyadarshini Panda (University of Southern California), is celebrated for her leadership in neuromorphic computing and spiking neural networks. A former SRC Research Scholar, her research interests lie in algorithm-hardware co-design for efficient AI/ML, neuromorphic computing and spiking neural networks.

Prof. Panda’s research has established new frontiers in neuromorphic computing, making her a recognized leader in spiking network research. Her work is both visionary and actionable, shaping the future of AI and semiconductors. Panda's impact on the SRC community has been profound, from technology transfer and open-source tool development to student training and thought leadership. She is the recipient of the DARPA Young Faculty Award, DARPA Director’s Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, and the Google Systems and ML Award, recognizing her leadership in AI hardware and systems research. Congratulations, Professor Panda!

Sustainable Future Award

The 2025 Sustainable Future awardee is Professor Tajana Šimunić Rosing (University of California San Diego).

As Director of the PRISM Center, Rosing’s focus is on HD computing, especially when paired with co-design of optimal hardware. Her research is enabling the quest for more energy efficient computing that spans the data center to the edge and application areas as diverse as genetic sequencing and biomics to working closely with companies such as Intel on performance and energy efficiency improvements for recommendation systems at iso-accuracy and with improved robustness to noise.​

Prof. Rosing has a rich history of experience with SRC, beginning as an SRC Research Scholar while a graduate student. She has since been involved as a PI and Theme lead in GSRC, MuSyC, TerraSwarm, CRISP, and the CoCoSys Center. Now Director of the PRISM Center, Rosing is an ACM & IEEE Fellow and was selected as Semiconductor Industry Association’s University Research Award winner for Design in 2022. Congratulations, Professor Rosing!

SRC Innovation Award

The Innovation Award recognizes impactful patents and intellectual property arising from SRC research. Professor Krishnendu Chakrabarty (Arizona State University) receives this honor for developing a novel Design-for-Test (DfT) architecture, U.S. Patent US10444279B2, that enables pre-bond parametric testing of through-silicon vias (TSVs). This technology allows early defect detection, improving yield and reliability in advanced 3D integrated circuits. Chakrabarty’s work has been widely recognized and adopted in the semiconductor industry, including by companies like Intel, Mentor Graphics, Samsung, TSMC, NXP, and Qualcomm.

Chakrabarty’s distinguished career includes 950 peer-reviewed papers, nearly 30 books, and 24 patents. His current research is in the areas of design-for-test of 3D integrated circuits and heterogeneous integration, AI accelerators, microfluidic biochips, hardware security, and AI for healthcare. Congratulations, Professor Chakrabarty!

Mahboob Khan Outstanding Liaison Award

This award celebrates Liaisons who significantly contribute to research, technology transfer, and SRC Research Scholar education and development. The 2025 recipients are:

Amitabh Das (AMD), Kevin Chuang (Analog Devices), Subhashish Chakravarty (Collins Aerospace), Ravi Kanjolia (EMD Electronics), Nigel Cave (GlobalFoundries), Bradley Bingham (IBM), Ching-Tzu Chen (IBM), Martin M. Frank (IBM), Manoj Kumar (IBM), Ananda Samajdar (IBM), James Blackwell (Intel), Rosario Cammarota (Intel), Songtao Liu (Intel), Pietro Mercati (Intel), Arnab Raha (Intel), Gurpreet Singh (Intel), Sachin Taneja (Intel), Tristan A. Tronic (Intel), Yu-Tao Yang (MediaTek), Timothy Hollis (Micron), Glen Hush (Micron), Sai-Wang (Rocco) Tam (NXP Semiconductors), Richard Lai (NXP Semiconductors), Mike Burkland (RTX Corporation), Jinin So (Samsung Electronics), Hyunil Byun (Samsung Electronics), Abhishek Somani (Siemens EDA), Hoshik Kim (SK hynix), Joonseop Sim (SK hynix), Wootae Lee (SK hynix), Won-Tae Koo (SK hynix), Ryan Burns (TEL), Masoud Farhadi (TI), Siva Gurrum (TI), Raveesh Magod (TI), and Ramakrishnan Venkatraman (TI).

These awards will be presented at SRC’s TECHCON 2025 conference, held in Austin, Texas. TECHCON fosters direct interaction between semiconductor industry professionals and SRC Research Scholars, with a diverse student population including undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. SRC member company engineers, scientists, and recruiters gather at TECHCON to exchange technology insights, share career advice, and network through both formal events and informal conversations.

About Semiconductor Research Corporation

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) is a world-class, non-profit consortium that works with industry, government, and academia partners to define, fund and manage university research on behalf of its member companies. Through its highly regarded research programs, SRC plays an indispensable part in both research and development strategies of the most influential industry leaders. Members of SRC gain access to research results, fundamental IP, and highly experienced students to compete in the global marketplace and build the workforce of tomorrow. SRC also leads the SMART USA Institute, a national initiative focused on advancing digital twin technologies and workforce development in semiconductor manufacturing. Through SMART USA, SRC fosters innovation, education, and collaboration to accelerate the transformation of the semiconductor ecosystem.

For more information and to stay informed on our advancements, visit www.smartusatwins.org and www.src.org.

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These awards recognize professionals and university researchers who have significantly advanced the industry and SRC’s mission.