Summer 2013 Activities:

Summary of Activities

Dr. Tan recruited three students from UCR, Justin Landfried, Michael Brevard, Andrew Nguyen, to participate this year IRES program, which is also called Ceitres (Computer Engineering International Training and Research Experience for Students, see  http://www.engr.ucr.edu/ceitres/)  at UC Riverside. 

•Before Departure

The three US students along with Dr. Tan spent five weeks in Beijing, China from June 29 to July 31, 2013. Before the departure, all three students worked in Dr. Tan’s lab for one quarter (Winter quarter),  which prepares them for the joint research project with Prof. Cai’s group at Tsinghua University. The three students also obtained basic survival Chinese language training in Dr. Tan’s Lab by talking to some Chinese Ph.D. students. The students were also partially supported by the NSF REU programs for their studies at UCR.

The three U.S. students obtained all the necessary travel documents include visiting visas of China and finished all the required paper works such as Student Information Form, Waiver of Liability, Release Form, Student Agreement Form in May 2013. The PI also made sure all the students had the health insurance covering their travel in China before they left U.S.

On May 2013, the three students met Mr. Jun Wang, who was the undergraduate research director and the program manager for the program at the Bourns College of Engineering in UC Riverside. Jun brought many useful information materials to the students and introduced the several important culture and language issues students need to pay attention to. Jun also helped student for obtaining the visa applications to the Chinese Consulate at Los Angeles in person. He was really helpful for the IRES students this year.

•Arrived in Beijing on June 29

Dr. Tan arrived in Beijing on June 25 to take care of the housing and other issues. On June 29, the three U.S. student arrived at the Beijing International Airport at the very early morning. Dr. Tan helped the students to check into the Visiting Scholar Apartment (Southwest Building 8-1-301) inside Tsinghua University and helped them settle down.  The apartment has 3 bed rooms with kitchen and laundry inside.

Figure 1. The three IRES students at the Beijing International Airport (from left to right Justin Landfried, Andrew Nguyen, Michael Brevard) on June 29, 2013

•June 29 to Aug. 6

In their first week at Tsinghua, Dr. Tan  and the three students started to work in the EDA Lab at Tsinghua University. The research topic for this year focuses on finite difference based thermal analysis and creation of the user interface for meshing and modeling. Prof. Yici Cai is the main host mentor at Tsinghua.

Figure 2 From left to right, Andrew Nguyen , Justin Landfried, The PI, Prof. Yici Cai, Michael Brevard , Dr. Sheldon Tan,  Jerry Yang at the EDA Lab at Tsinghua Univ.

Prof. Cai sent one student, Jianlei Yang and Xin (Woody) Wang  to help the US student for the joint research works and social activities as well.

•July 21-July 27 2013

On July 21, 2013, Dr. Tan went to Shanghai to participate a Cloud, Storage and Big Data Summit held in Shanghai. The summit was organized  by Chinese American Information Storage Society (CAISS) and IEEE Data Storage Technical Committee. The PI chaired one technical session about the non-volatile memory devices. The Summit extracted many leading experts from both industry and academia to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the clouding computing, big data research and developments.

Figure 3 The Cloud, Storage and Big Data Summit Conference  in Shanghai on July 21, 2013

On July 25-26, Dr. Tan went to Chengdu, China  for the International Workshop on Emerging Circuits and Systems (IWECS’13). IWECS13 was organized by the PI  and it is 5th IWECS workshop event this year. The workshop was held on Greenland Hotel in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. It consists of one and a half day technical sessions and post-workshop social events. The technical sessions consist of 16 invited talks in 7 sessions given by faculty and industry senior peoples. The workshop attracted about 30 participants from local university and semiconductor and electronic design automation (EDA) industries.  Dr. Sheldon Tan presented an opening speech for the workshop and an invited talk on  parallel computing and simulation for power switching integration circuits:

•International Workshop on Emerging Circuits and Systems (IWECS’13), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, Sichun Province, China, “Thermal resistance modeling and characterization for TSV and TSV array”, July 26,  2014.

Figure 4 The IWECS'13 workshop at Chengdu, Sichuan Province on Aug. 25, 2013.

Figure 5 The participants in the IWECS13 workshop on July 26, 2013

•July 28 to July 31, 2013

In last week, Prof. Tan and US students were mainly focusing the joint research works in the EDA Lab at Tsinghua University. The US students and their collaborative host students did a good job to finish the finite difference meshing generation program and created a number of thermal models for 3D stacked ICs.

The US student presented their research works at EDA Lab and social activities  in Beijing in front of faculty and graduate students at EDA Lab. Their presentation was well received. A more detailed report on their research work will be presented in the student report.

Figure 6 The IRES students  in the front of the old gate of Tsinghua University on July 18, 2013

Figure 7 IRES students presented his research work at EDA Lab on July 30, 2013.