Our Team

Xuan ‘Silvia’ Zhang, PhD

Associate Professor

Email: xuan.zhang@northeastern.edu

Google Scholar Profile

Professor Zhang’s research interests span the fields of IC design/VLSI, computer architecture, and electronic design automation (EDA). She is especially curious about how to build, miniaturize, and optimize autonomous systems for performance, reliability, security, and energy efficiency, with diverse applications in cyber-physical systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), and autonomous robotics.

Jian Gao

Email: gao.jian3@northeastern.edu

I am a first-year PhD student advised by Prof. Xuan Zhang. My research focused on design automation for analog circuit topology generation and transistor sizing. My B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering were received from Washington University in St. Louis in 2023.

Tianrui Ma

Email: tianrui.ma@wustl.edu

I joined Silvia Zhang’s lab in 2019 Fall. Before that, I graduated from Beihang University with B.E. in electrical engineering. I’m interested in CMOS image sensor design dedicated to machine learning and Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. I like doing workout and eating donuts after workout (KK is my favorite besides homemade ones).

Adith Boloor

Email: adith@wustl.edu

My research involves applying machine learning (ML) to the many facets of robotics, especially computer vision. I also like finding adversaries (security vulnerabilities) in existing ML pipelines, like in self driving vehicles. My current work is about improving the efficiency of ML in hardware. 

Oren Bell

Email: oren.bell@wustl.edu

I’m a fourth year PhD student, working under the co-advisement of Silvia Zhang and Chris Gill. My BS in Computer Engineering was received from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2017. I frequently contribute to the ROS2 codebase, and actively participate in the ROS2 real-time working group. My primary research concerns heterogeneous memory aware zero-copy, a tactic to minimize consumption of memory bandwidth in component-based applications running on heterogeneous hardware.

Chenfeng Zhao

Email: chenfeng.zhao@wustl.edu

I’m a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate co-advised by Professor Xuan ‘Silvia’ Zhang and Professor Roger Chamberlain. My research areas include near-memory processing for a variety of applications, high-performance and energy-saving computing on heterogeneous systems, and hardware/software codesign. I graduated from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2015 and 2018 with B.E and M.S. respectively.