Research Interests

• FPGA architectures, tools, and applications
• Ultra-low power circuits and systems
• Embedded system design and methodology for applications in hardware security, smart vehicles and machine learning

Current Positions

Yajun Ha is a distinguished professor at ShanghaiTech University, recognized for his leadership and contributions in academia and research. His key roles and achievements include:

• Professor (Tenured), School of Information Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University.
• Winner, National Natural Science Foundation of China’s Research Fund for International Senior Scientists and Key International (Regional) Joint Research Program.
• Director, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Energy Efficient and Custom AI IC.
• Director, PMICC Center and Academic Committee.
• Deputy Director, Teacher Recruitment Committee.

Professional Activities and Services

Prof. Yajun Ha has consistently dedicated himself to making significant contributions to the field of circuits and systems. His key contributions include:

Editorial Roles

• Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs (2022–2023).
• Associate Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs (2020–2021).
• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers (2016–2019).
• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs (2011–2013).
• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems (2013–2014).
• Associate Editor, Journal of Low Power Electronics (since 2009).

Conference Leadership

• TPC Co-Chair, ISICAS 2020.
• General Co-Chair, ASP-DAC 2014.
• Program Co-Chair, FPT 2010 and FPT 2013.
• Chair, Singapore Chapter of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society (2011–2012).
• Member, ASP-DAC Steering Committee.
• Member, IEEE CAS VLSI and Applications Technical Committee.

Program Committee Member

• Served on program committees for renowned conferences, including DAC, DATE, ASP-DAC, FPGA, FPL, and FPT.

Past Experience and Education

Previous Academic and Professional Roles

• Co-Director & Scientist
  I2R-BYD Joint Lab, Institute for Infocomm Research
  Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore (Jan. 2014 – Jan. 2017)

• Adjunct Associate Professor
  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore (Jan. 2014 – Jan. 2017)

• Assistant Professor
  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore (Mar. 2004 – Dec. 2013)

• Affiliate Researcher
  Design Technology Division, IMEC, Belgium (Jan. 1999 – Feb. 2004)

• Graduate Research Assistant
  Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Singapore (Jul. 1997 – Jan. 1999)

• Other Professional Experiences
  Research Assistant, Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Singapore (Aug. 1996 – Jun. 1997)

Education

• Ph.D., Electrical Engineering
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (2004)
• M.Eng., Electrical Engineering
  National University of Singapore, Singapore (2000)
• B.S., Electrical Engineering
  Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China (1996)

Research Grants

• National Natural Science Fund of China, Joint Fund Project (国自然联合基金项目)
  Key Technology Research on Expandable FPGA Architecture and Tools Based on Memristor In-Store Computing
  Duration & Funding: 2025.01–2028.01, RMB 2,560,000
  Status & Role: ● Ongoing, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• National Natural Science Fund of China, International (Regional) Cooperation & Exchange Program (国自然重点国际 (地区) 合作项目)
  Research of Key Technologies for Integrated Circuit Reliability Aware Task
  Duration & Funding: 2023.01–2027.12, RMB 2,520,000
  Status & Role: ● Ongoing, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• National Natural Science Fund of China, Research Fund for International Senior Scientists (国自然外国资深学者项目)
  Energy Efficient Circuits and Systems for Edge Intelligent Computing
  Duration & Funding: 2022.01–2023.12, RMB 1,600,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• National Natural Science Fund of China, General Program (国自然面上项目)
  Key Technology Research on Ultra-Low-Power Sub/Near-Threshold FPGAs
  Duration & Funding: 2021.01–2024.12, RMB 590,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Shanghai Science and Technology Committee
  Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Energy Efficient and Custom AI IC
  Duration & Funding: 2021.01–2022.12, RMB 2,000,000 (conditional)
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission, Shanghai Natural Science Foundation General Project
  Research and Development of Scalable FPGA Architecture and Design Tools Based on Network-on-Chip
  Duration & Funding: 2020.07–2023.06, RMB 200,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Shanghai Science and Technology Committee
  Research of Scalable FPGA Architecture and EDA Tools based on Network-on-Chip
  Duration & Funding: 2020.07–2023.06, RMB 200,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Research Grant from Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science
  Research of IP in Field Programmable Neural Network IC Chip
  Duration & Funding: 2020.10–2021.04, RMB 300,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Shanghai Science and Technology Committee
  Research and Development of IC for CMOS Image Sensors
  Duration & Funding: 2019.09–2022.08, RMB 2,400,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Co-Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Industry Grant from Voyagerauto Ltd
  Energy-efficient High Precision Localization with Sensor Fusion
  Duration & Funding: 2019.03–2020.03, RMB 300,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Open Research Grant from National Key Lab on IC Design, Ministry of Education, China
  Ultra Low Power FPGA
  Duration & Funding: 2018.07–2019.12, RMB 100,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Start-Up Grant from ShanghaiTech University
  Intelligent Hardware Design Framework
  Duration & Funding: 2017.01–2021.01, RMB 5,000,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Industry Grant from BYD
  Autonomous Electric Vehicle Technologies
  Duration & Funding: 2013.11–2019.10, SGD 36,000,000
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Co-Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Singapore A*Star Grant
  A Power-Efficient Heterogeneous Architecture and Run-Time Manager for Data Center Servers
  Duration & Funding: 2011.08–2013.04, SGD 876,813
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• Singapore A*Star Grant
  Secured Large Scale Shared Storage System
  Duration & Funding: 2011.08–2014.07, SGD 709,092 (out of total SGD 1,815,515)
  Status & Role: ● Completed, NUS Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• A*Star Fund
  Pseudo-Random Single Photon Counting for Time-Resolved Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging
  Duration & Funding: 2006.07–2009.12, SGD 635,140
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Co-Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• ARF Fund
  Global Virtual Machine
  Duration & Funding: 2004.01–2008.01, SGD 92,365
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Co-Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

• ARF Fund
  Networked Reconfigurable Embedded Systems
  Duration & Funding: 2004.11–2007.11, SGD 97,789
  Status & Role: ● Completed, Principal Investigator (Prof. Yajun Ha)

Awards and Honors

• Best Paper Award
  2022 IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Circuits and Systems (APCCAS)
  Jianwen Luo, Xinzhe Liu, Fupeng Chen, Yajun Ha, “Hierarchical and Recursive Floorplanning Algorithm for NoC-Based Scalable Multi-Die FPGAs” (2022).

• EDAthon 2021 Champion
  2021 IEEE CEDA Hong Kong Chapter
  Rui Li, Lin Li, Yajun Ha (2021).

• First Place, DAC 2021 System Design Contest
  2021 Design Automation Conference
  Zhiqi Zhou, Shaoyi Chen, Weixiong Jiang, Songyang Zhang, Qi Deng, Wen Chen, Jianwen Luo, Xinzhe Liu, Heng Yu, Yajun Ha (2021).

• Second Place, DAC 2020 System Design Contest
  2020 Design Automation Conference
  Weixiong Jiang, Xinzhe Liu, Hao Sun, Rui Li, Yajun Ha, Wen Chen, Shaobo Luo, Heng Yu (2020).

• Best Paper Award
  2017 Proceedings of the Computing Frontiers Conference
  Heng Yu, Yajun Ha, Jing Wang, “Quality Optimization of Resilient Applications under Temperature Constraints” (2017).

• Highlight Paper Award
  2009 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Y. Pu, J. Pineda, H. Corporaal, Y. Ha, “An Ultra Low-Energy/Frame Multi-standard JPEG Co-processor in 65nm CMOS with Sub/Near Threshold Power Supply” (San Francisco, USA, Feb. 2009).

• Best Poster Award
  2008 19th ProRISC Workshop on Integrated System and Circuits
  Veldhoven, Netherlands (2008).

• Best Paper Nomination
  2007 17th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL)
  Lee, W. Loke, W. Zhang, Y. Ha, “Fast and Accurate Interval-Based Timing Estimator for Variability-Aware FPGA Physical Synthesis Tools” (Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Aug. 2007).