Martin D. F. Wong

2017 Distinguished Academic Achievement Alumni Award

Martin Wong is a leading expert in Electronic Design Automation, or EDA, an indispensable technology for chip design, and he is the executive associate dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois.

He has made significant contributions in the algorithmic aspects of the design of very-large scaled integrated (VLSI) circuits and systems. Those contributions date to his thesis for his 1987 PhD, “Algorithmic Aspects of VLSI Circuit Layout.”

Wong is a prolific scholar, publishing more than 450 papers. In fact, he was recognized in 2015 with the ASP-DAC conference’s Most Frequent Author Award for his contributions over the previous 20 years. He has won six best-paper awards, four for his work on chip floor plan design and wire routing.  

Wong also has an incredible legacy as a mentor, having advised 48 PhD students, three of whom have been recognized by the EDA research community with best PhD dissertation awards.  Because many of his students are now influencing industry, and due to his significant technological contributions to the field, Wong was recognized in 2015 with the inaugural EDA Research Award by Synopsys, a leading EDA company. 

Wong’s research has also been recognized by, among many others, the National Science Foundation, with its Research Initiation Award, and by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is an IEEE Fellow and was an IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer.  Wong has also been honored with ACM SIGDA’s Distinguished Service Award for helping to organize many EDA conferences.

Wong was a member of the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin from 1987 until he returned to Illinois in 2002, where he is currently the Edward C. Jordan Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.