On 10 October 2019, an opening ceremony was held at the campus of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China, to celebrate the formation of the IEEE CASS-EDS-SSCS Wuhan Joint Chapter (Wuhan Joint Chapter). The opening ceremony was organized together with a technical forum on advanced integrated circuit (IC) and an advanced IC poster competition for students. The event was jointly hosted by the Wuhan Joint Chapter, the School of Optical and Electronic Information (SOEI), and the Wuhan International Institute of Microelectronics (WHIME), HUST.
In the morning session, Prof. Jiang Tang, the dean of SOEI, HUST, firstly delivered an opening address and congratulated the formation of the Joint Chapter. He talked about the important role of the Joint Chapter and how it will help the faculty and students to advance their careers in either academia or industry. Next, Prof. Chao Wang, the founding chair of the Chapter, from HUST, introduced the newly-established Chapter. Specifically, he introduced the newly-formed committee from eight founding organizations including the HUST, Wuhan University, Hubei University, Hubei University of Technology, XMC, Synopsys Wuhan Limited, Tianma Microelectronics, and FiberHome Microelectronics. Then, on behalf of IEEE, Prof. Yong Lian, the President of IEEE CAS Society, officially announced the formation of the IEEE CASS-EDS-SSCS Wuhan Joint Chapter and awarded the Chapter Banner to the Chapter Chair, Prof. Chao Wang.
Afterwards, Prof. Guilin Zheng, the Chair of IEEE Wuhan Section, from Wuhan University, introduced the IEEE Wuhan Section and the IEEE Region 10. He talked the benefits of IEEE members including the access to IEEE publication, professional networking, career opportunities, continuing education, etc. Then, Prof. Yong Lian, the IEEE CASS President introduced IEEE and promoted the CAS Society. He encouraged the faculty and students to join the IEEE and its affiliated societies and participated in the various IEEE-sponsored activities around the world. Prof. Yoshifumi Nishio, the Vice President of IEEE CAS Society, from Tokushima University, spoke next to promote the CASS. Prof. Nishio introduced the activities of CAS Society in Region 10 and encouraged the students to join the CAS Society on the spot. Following the CASS representatives, Dr. Shuji Ikeda, a BoG member of IEEE ED Society, promoted the IEEE ED Society by introducing the society and its regional activities in Region 10. Prof. Hanjun Jiang, the former chair of IEEE SSCS Beijing Chapter, from Tsinghua University, promoted the IEEE SSC Society and also shared the growing experience of the SSCS Beijing Chapter to the newly-formed Wuhan Joint Chapter. As the Vice Chair of an outstanding chapter of the IEEE CAS Society, Dr. Kwen-Siong Chong from CASS Singapore Chapter also shared the success experience by introducing the chapter organization and activities in the past few years.
The afternoon session was the advanced integrated circuit forum consisting of five technical talks. Firstly, Prof. Bah-Hwee Gwee, the committee member of CASS Singapore Chapter, from Nanyang Technological University, gave a talk on machine learning for automatic analysis of delayered IC images. Then, Prof. Guoxing Wang, the Vice President of IEEE CAS Society, from Shanghai Jiaotong University, gave a lecture titled “A New Signal Processing Paradigm: Continuous-Time Discrete-Amplitude (CTDA) Systems”. Afterwards, Prof Runsheng Wang, from Peking University, gave a talk titled “The Smaller, the Bigger – Understanding Variability in Nanoscale CMOS Devices and Circuits”. Prof. Chun Zhang, from Tsinghua University, talked about sensors and integrated circuits for robots. At last, Prof Qiang Li, the Chair of CASS Chengdu Chapter, from University of Electronic Science and Technology, talked about ultra-low voltage ADC design.
The one-day event was concluded by the award ceremony of the advanced IC poster competition. In total, there were 19 students from various universities (HUST, Wuhan University, Hubei University of Technology, and Nanyang Technological University, etc) who had submitted a poster to present his/her research work in the fields of integrated systems, circuits and devices. All posters had been assessed by a panel of six professors through one round of online examination and another round of assessment in the poster session during teabreak. Based on the scores of the panel members, the first-class, second-class, and third-class winners received award certificates and cash prizes sponsored by the IEEE CAS Society. The results of the competition are as follows:
nOne first-class prize (RMB 500): Zhicheng Wang, “A Time-Division-Multiplexing (TDM) Scheme for Simultaneous Wavelength Locking of Multiple Silicon Micro-rings”;
nTwo second-class prizes (RMB 300 each): Nian Duan, “An Electro-Photo-Sensitive Synaptic Transistor for Edge Neuromorphic Visual System”; Yi Zhan, “A 180nW 100KHz ultra-low power relaxation oscillator”;
nThree third-class prizes (RMB 100 each): Jia Chen, “A Comprehensive Mixed Hardware-Software Study on 1T1R RRAMs based Convolution Neural Network”; Kaixuan Ye, “A 0.5-V Capless LDO with 30-dB PSRR at 10-kHz Using a Lightweight Local Generated Supply”; Long Cheng, “Functional demonstration of in-memory arithmetic logic unit in memristive crossbar array”;
There are about 100 research faculty and students attended the opening ceremony and technical forum. The event was well received and very successful.
As the biggest city in the central China, Wuhan is famous as the one of the four key semiconductor bases as well as one of the higher education hubs in China, which has many famous semiconductor companies and more than 80 universities. By forming this Joint Chapter, the Wuhan Joint Chapter plan to build a platform for the academia and industry in the fields of integrated circuits in Wuhan area and also help to promote academic exchanges between Wuhan and the rest of the world
Figure 1 – IEEE CASS-EDS-SSCS Wuhan Joint Chapter Opening Ceremony in HUST (From left): Prof. Chao Wang (Chair of the Wuhan Joint Chapter), Prof. Yong Lian (President of IEEE CAS Society), and Prof. Xiaofei Yang (Vice Dean of the School of Optical and Electronic Information, HUST).
Figure 2 – A group photo of the newly-formed IEEE CASS-EDS-SSCS Wuhan Joint Chapter.
Figure 3 – Prof. Yong Lian, the President of IEEE CAS Society, was promoting the IEEE CAS Society.
Figure 4– Prof. Yoshifumi Nishio, the Vice President of IEEE CAS Society, was introducing the IEEE CASS Region 10 and recruiting the new members on the spot.
