Nan Wu @ GWU

Nan Wu is an Assistant Professor in the ECE department at the George Washington University. Her research interests lie in the joint area among computer architecture, electronic design automation (EDA), and machine learning (ML). She leads the research on ML for computer architecture and EDA, aiming to foster the virtuous cycle between hardware development and AI/ML. She received the Ph.D. degree in the ECE department at University of California, Santa Barbara, under the supervision of Dr. Yuan Xie, and the B.S degrees in Electronic Engineering and Economics from Tsinghua University in 2016.

We are always expecting self-motivated, talented, and hardworking students. Please contact me if you are interested in my work or pursuing a Ph.D degree.
Email: nan.wu@gwu.edu

Conference Publications

DAC'23 Gamora: Graph Learning based Symbolic Reasoning for Large-Scale Boolean Networks.
Nan Wu, Yingjie Li, Cong Hao, Steve Dai, Cunxi Yu, Yuan Xie.
Proceedings of the 60th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2023.
Best Paper Award

ISQED'23 PreAxC: Error Distribution Prediction for Approximate Computing Quality Control using Graph Neural Networks.
Lakshmi Sathidevi, Abhinav Sharma, Nan Wu, Xun Jiao, Cong Hao.
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED), 2023.

ICCD'22 AI-assisted Synthesis in Next Generation EDA: Promises, Challenges, and Prospects.
Nan Wu, Yuan Xie, Cong Hao.
Proceedings of the 40th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), 2022.

NeurIPS'22 Unsupervised Learning for Combinatorial Optimization with Principled Objective Relaxation.
Haoyu Wang, Nan Wu, Hang Yang, Cong Hao, Pan Li.
Proceedings of the 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2022.

DAC'22 High-Level Synthesis Performance Prediction using GNNs: Benchmarking, Modeling, and Advancing. [code]
Nan Wu, Hang Yang, Yuan Xie, Pan Li, Cong Hao.
Proceedings of the 59th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2022.

ASAP'22 LOSTIN: Logic Optimization via Spatio-Temporal Information with Hybrid Graph Models. [code]
Nan Wu, Jiwon Lee, Yuan Xie, Cong Hao.
Proceedings of the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP), 2022.
Best Paper Candidate

GLSVLSI'21 IronMan: GNN-assisted Design Space Exploration in High-Level Synthesis via Reinforcement Learning. [code]
Nan Wu, Yuan Xie, Cong Hao.
Proceedings of ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI), 2021.
Best Paper Award

ISCAS'19 Preliminary Results Towards Reinforcement Learning with Mixed-Signal Memristive Neuromorphic Circuits.
Nan Wu, Adrien Vincent, Dmitri Strukov.
Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2019.

ISVLSI'16 A Real-Time and Energy-Efficient Implementation of Difference-of-Gaussian with Flexible Thin-Film Transistors.
Nan Wu, Zheyu Liu, Fei Qiao, Qi Wei, Xiaojun Guo, Yuan Xie, Huazhong Yang.
Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI), 2016.

CAD-TFT'16 Computable Flexible Electronics: Circuits Exploring for Image Filtering Accelerator with OTFT.
Zheyu Liu, Nan Wu, Fei Qiao, Qi Wei, Xiaojun Guo, Yongpan Liu, Huazhong Yang.
Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on Computer Aided Design for Thin-Film Transistor Technologies (CAD-TFT), 2016.

Journal Publications

TODAES'24 Survey of Machine Learning for Software-assisted Hardware Design Verification: Past, Present, and Prospect.
Nan Wu, Yingjie Li, Hang Yang, Hanqiu Chen, Steve Dai, Cong Hao, Cunxi Yu, Yuan Xie.
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES), 2024.

TCAD'22 IronMan-Pro: Multi-objective Design Space Exploration in HLS via Reinforcement Learning and Graph Neural Network based Modeling. [code]
Nan Wu, Yuan Xie, Cong Hao.
IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), 2022.

CSUR'22 A Survey of Machine Learning for Computer Architecture and Systems.
Nan Wu, Yuan Xie.
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 2022.

TODAES'20 Core Placement Optimization for Multi-chip Many-core Neural Network Systems with Reinforcement Learning.
Nan Wu, Lei Deng, Guoqi Li, Yuan Xie.
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES), 2020.

JCSE'16 Taxonomy and Overview of Distributed Malfunction Diagnosis in Networks of Intelligent Nodes.
Behrooz Parhami, Nan Wu, Sixin Tao.
The CSI Journal on Computer Science and Engineering, 2016.

Workshop, Poster, Preprint

DAC WIP'22 Hybrid Graph Models for Logic Optimization via Spatio-Temporal Information.
Nan Wu, Jiwon Lee, Yuan Xie, Cong Hao.
The 59th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), Work-in-Progress Poster, 2022.

DAC WIP'22 Error Distribution Modeling for Behavior-Level Approximate Computing.
Lakshmi Sathidevi, Abhinav Sharma, Nan Wu, Xun Jiao, Cong Hao.
The 59th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), Work-in-Progress Poster, 2022.

IBM AICS'21 Program-to-Circuit: Exploiting GNNs for Program Representation and Circuit Translation. [paper] [poster]
Nan Wu, Huake He, Yuan Xie, Pan Li, Cong Hao.
IBM IEEE CAS/EDS – AI Compute Symposium, 2021.

PHMO PPoPP'21 Phoebe: Reuse-Aware Online Caching with Reinforcement Learning for Emerging Storage Models. [paper]
Nan Wu, Pengcheng Li.
Workshop on Principles of Memory Hierarchy Optimization (PHMO), collocated with Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), 2021.

Awards & Honors
EDAA Outstanding Dissertation Award	2024
Best Paper Award, IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC)	2023
UCSB ECE Dissertation Fellowship	2023
Best Paper Candidate, IEEE International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP)	2022
Best Paper Award, IEEE/ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI)	2021
Excellent Undergraduate Student, Tsinghua University	2016
Award for Outstanding Student Leader in EE Department, Tsinghua University	2015
Scholarship for Academic Excellence, Tsinghua University	2015
Scholarship for Social Work Excellence, Tsinghua University	2015
Tsinghua University & Western Digital Innovative Vanguard Scholarship	2015
Scholarship for Social Work Excellence, Tsinghua University	2014
Scholarship for Comprehensive Excellence, Tsinghua University	2013

Teaching

ECE6882 Reinforcement Learning
Instructor, Spring 2024, GWU

ECE6210 Machine Intelligence
Instructor, Fall 2023, GWU

ECE4100/ECE6100/CS4290/CS6290 Advanced Computer Architecture
Guest Lecturer, Fall 2021/2022, Georgia Institute of Technology

ECE154B Advanced Computer Architecture
Teaching Assistant, Spring 2017, UCSB

Professional Service

Conference Service

Vice Chair of University Demo @ DAC'2024
Registration co-chair, TPC, session chair @ ICCD'2023

Conference Reviewer

ISCA: International Symposium on Computer Architecture
2024
DAC: IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference
2024 2025
DATE: Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference
2025
ICCD: IEEE International Conference on Computer Design
2023
MLCAD: ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Machine Learning for CAD
2024
ISCAS: IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems
2021 2022
MEAAC: International Conference on Mechanics, Electronics, Automation and Automatic Control
2023

Journal Reviewer

TCAD: IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
TC: IEEE Transactions on Computers
TNNLS: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
TCAS-I: IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers
TCAS-II: IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs
TECS: ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems
NPL: Neural Processing Letters (Springer)
AIIM: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (Elsevier)