The Computer Engineering and Systems Group

CESG Fall Event at PopStroke

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:38:40 +0000

OCT

2026

CESG Student Fall Event

A spooky good afternoon at PopStroke

The CESG Student Fall Event took over PopStroke by Century Square on October 23, and the weather could not have been better. Students and faculty swapped the lab for the patio and spent the afternoon eating, playing and putting their skills to the test on the mini golf course, with mixed results.

Trick or treat: the recap

That’s a wrap! Here’s how each part of the afternoon went.

Hole 01

Lunch

Plates piled high on the patio while students and faculty caught up with friends and labmates away from the lab.

Hole 02

Games

Friendly competition between rounds kept the energy high all afternoon.

Hole 03

“Golf”

A few hole in ones, a lot of creative angles, and plenty of cheering either way.

The photo wall

Watch out for spiders.

Welcome to the CESG Fall Event

First stop: the food line

The whole crew

Thumbs up from the pumpkin patch

Pumpkin patch photo op

The best part of engineering is the people you do it with.

CESG

Thank you to all the students and faculty who attended and joined in on lunch, games and “golf”! The weather-perfect day was great for building our bonds now and for the future!

CESG Students Take Three Spots at the ECE Graduate Poster Event

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:47:18 +0000

ECE Graduate Poster Event

Friday, Sept 25

WEB Lobby

Three posters, three very different problems, one research group. CESG students brought home three awards at this year’s ECE Graduate Poster Event, with work spanning hardware security, edge computing and robotics.

rdPlace

Hardware Security

Satota Mandal

Paper title

Hou’s test

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:37:43 +0000

CESG at the ECE Graduate Poster Event

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:42:26 +0000

Our students showcase their research, scholarly, and creative activities!

Friday, Sept. 25, 2026 · 1:30 – 3:30 PM
Wisenbaker Engineering Building (WEB) Lobby

Student Names	Poster Title	Faculty Advisor
Arjuman Ara Mimi	Combinatorial Optimization using TRNG from 3D NAND Flash	Dr. Suin Yi
Chia-Hsiang Shyu	Distributed Algorithm for Multi-Hop Linear Contextual Bandit	Dr. I-Hong Hou
Daniel Puckett	Bottleneck Interactions on Out-of-Order CPUs	Dr. Paul Gratz
Dayou Li	EgoHOI: Egocentric World Model for Photorealistic Hand-Object Interaction Synthesis	Dr. Zhiwen Fan
Fatemeh Doudi Visnu Teja Kunde Mahdi Farahbakhsh	Reinforcement Learning for Diffusion LLMs with Entropy-Guided Step Selection and Stepwise Advantages	Dr. Dileep Kalathil
Fenghua Wu	Spec2Assertion	Dr. Jiang Hu
Haodong Chang	Fast Cross-Operator Optimization of Attention Dataflow on Spatial Accelerators	Dr. Jiang Hu
Jinzhan Li	True Random Number Generation Using 3D NAND Flash	Dr. Suin Yi
Joshua Mashburn	Targeted Wearout Attacks in Microprocessor Cores	Dr. Paul Gratz
Lei Wang	R-Max: Extending Bélády’s MIN with Prefetching to Bound Realistic Cache Performance	Dr. Paul Gratz
Luis Loo	An Agentic AI Science Community for Automated Neural Operator Discovery	Dr. Ulisses Braga-Neto
Mincheol Seong	Fast Constraint Adaptation in Constrained Reinforcement Learning via Zero-Shot Primal-Dual Updates	Dr. I-Hong Hou
Sabyasachi Gupta	Beyond Abstraction Overhead: Cross-Layer Characterization of Edge Serverless Execution	Dr. John Lusher II
Saichand Samudrala	Performance Optimization for 3DGS Inference	Dr. Paul Gratz
Satota Mandal	LASER: LLM-Assisted Side-channel Leakage Elimination and Resistance in Assembly Code	Dr. JV Rajendran
Seyed Ali Ghazi Asgar	Quietprint	Dr. Narasimha Reddy
Yiming Gao	PertReason: A Knowledge-Grounded Benchmark and Framework for Cell-State-Conditioned Mechanistic Reasoning of Perturbation Effects	Dr. Yang Shen
Yuxuan Liu	Protein Structure Perturbation Modelling with Ligand	Dr. Yang Shen

Skia: Advancing Processor Instruction Delivery

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:55:58 +0000

We are proud to highlight exciting research from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In collaboration with Intel, AheadComputing, and Princeton University, Dr. Paul V. Gratz, Dr. Daniel A. Jiménez, and Dr. Chrysanthos Pepi have developed Skia, a new technique that helps computer processors better predict future instructions and improve computing performance.

Modern data centers process massive amounts of information, making efficient instruction processing increasingly important. Skia addresses this challenge by identifying and decoding overlooked instructions, known as “shadow branches,” that are already present in the processor’s cache.

Dr. Chrysanthos Pepi | Dr. Paul V. Gratz

Featured Research

“Skia: Exposing Shadow Branches”

Researchers: Paul V. Gratz, Daniel A. Jiménez, and Chrysanthos Pepi

Read the research paper

By improving instruction prediction and throughput, Skia has the potential to make modern data centers faster and more energy efficient. The research was presented at the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS).

“Processing instructions has become a major bottleneck in modern processor design. We developed a new technique, Skia, to better predict what’s coming next and alleviate that bottleneck.”

— Dr. Paul V. Gratz

Congratulations to the research team on this innovative contribution to computer architecture!

Dr. Krishna R. Narayanan Selected as Dean’s Fellow for AI

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:21:08 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Krishna R. Narayanan has been selected as a Dean’s Fellow for AI, effective September 1.

The Dean’s Fellows program recognizes exceptional faculty members for their outstanding contributions, leadership, and commitment to advancing the university’s mission.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Krishna R. Narayanan on this prestigious recognition and new leadership role. His selection as a Dean’s Fellow reflects his continued leadership and contributions in the field of artificial intelligence.

Congratulations to Dr. Krishna R. Narayanan on this well-deserved honor and exciting new role!

CESG’s Summer 2026 Graduates

Tue, 05 May 2026 19:40:59 +0000

Congratulations to our Summer 2026 graduates from ECE’s Computer Engineering Systems Group (CESG) who are receiving their CEEN degrees on Saturday, August 8!

Doctorate Degrees
Dr. Swarnabha Roy (Advisor: Stavros Kalafatis)
Dr. Runzhi Wang (Advisor: Jiang Hu)

Masters’ Degrees with Thesis
Anshuman Bhagawati (Advisor: Dr. Paul Gratz)
Giacomo Coraluppi (Advisor: Dr. Jiang Hu)
Abdullah Azzaam Faisal Chaudhry (Advisor: Dr. Kevin Nowka)
Poornima Gulur Chakrapani (Advisor: Dr. Robert S. Balog)
Isabel Moore (Advisor: Dr. Srinivas Shakkottai)

Masters’ Degrees
Zeina Abu Ghosh
Ramchandra Sambhaji Balankar
Yashas Bharadwaj
Sai Akhil Venkatesh Khasim Setty
Bhavishya Kotipi Sivaramareddy
Gourav Chandra Naidu
Kavya Shree Muniraju
Vedang Narendra Natu
Neha Karunakar Raju
Michael Brian Reyes
Pushkaraj Krishna Said
Murari Siva Kumar
Alexander Wise

Graduates: Thank you for your hard work and efforts to do your best over the years with us. There are many demands on you from professors, advisors, family, and day-to-day life. We know you make many sacrifices, work long hours, maybe shed a few tears, but experience lots of growth too! So, we appreciate all you gave and hope you found growth, friendships, knowledge and inspiration for your futures!

The CESG and Dept. of ECE wish you all success personally and professionally as you pursue your careers. If you are still searching for your ideal job in industry or academia, we wish you the best and encourage you to check with TAMU Career Services for support as well as application and interviewing advice.

As you move ahead, please continue to strive for and live by the Aggie Core Values – *Respect, *Excellence, *Leadership, *Loyalty, *Integrity, and *Selfless Service.

Be sure to celebrate your achievements with family, with friends, with your lifelong family of Aggies graduates!

Note: The Commencement Ceremony is held on Saturday, August 8, at 2:00 p.m. in Reed Arena. (more info.)

Live Stream Information found HERE

Celebrating the Career of Dr. Weiping Shi

Tue, 05 May 2026 14:36:02 +0000

After 26 years of dedicated service to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, we are saying a bittersweet farewell to Dr. Weiping Shi as he begins his well-deserved retirement.

Dr. Shi joined the faculty in 2000 and quickly established himself as a world-renowned expert in VLSI and electronic design automation. As an IEEE Fellow, his work on parasitic extraction and layout synthesis has been instrumental in bridging the gap between academic research and industrial application.

“We hate to see you go, Dr. Shi! Thank you for your decades of leadership, innovation, and friendship.”

A Legacy of Mentorship

Beyond the lab, Dr. Shi’s impact is felt through the generations of engineers he has mentored and his commitment to the Computer Engineering Entrepreneurship program. His presence in the department will be deeply missed by colleagues and students alike.

Thank you for everything, Dr. Shi. Wishing you a happy and relaxing retirement!
Gig ’em!

Dr. Nick Duffield and Alumnus Dr. Ziyi Zhang Receive 2022–2025 Jack Dangermond Award

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:18:58 +0000

Journal:

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information

We are proud to announce that Dr. Nick Duffield and his former Ph.D. student, Dr. Ziyi Zhang, together with their co-authors Dr. Zhe Zhang of the Texas A&M Department of Geography and her former student Dr. Diya Li, have been honored with the Jack Dangermond Award for the 2022–2025 is presented every four years by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) to the authors of an outstanding paper published in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Award-Winning Research

“Mining Spatiotemporal Mobility Patterns Using Improved Deep Time Series Clustering”

Authors: Ziyi Zhang, Diya Li, Zhe Zhang, and Nick Duffield

View official Award Flyer (PDF)

Advisor: Dr. Nick Duffield

The team’s work bridges the gap between deep learning and geospatial science, introducing an AI framework that uncovers hidden mobility patterns in massive spatial time series data. Their methodology integrates a temporal autoencoder with dynamic time warping-based K-means clustering, providing critical insights for mobility analysis for the next generation of smart city infrastructure.

This achievement highlights the department’s commitment to fostering elite talent. Dr. Ziyi Zhang, who spearheaded this research during his doctoral studies, graduated in 2025. He has since taken his expertise in geospatial AI to the global stage as a Machine Learning Engineer at TikTok.

“It is an honour to receive the prestigious ISPRS Jack Dangermond Award… Many thanks to the Jury of high scientific standing who reviewed, selected, and awarded this work.”

— Dr. Ziyi Zhang

Congratulations to the team on this remarkable achievement!

Swarnabha Roy Honored with 2026 Unsung Hero Award

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:44:22 +0000

Excellence in Service
April 2026 · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering proudly announces that doctoral candidate Swarnabha Roy has received the 2026 Unsung Hero Award from the Texas A&M Graduate and Professional School.

The award was presented at the annual Dinner & Dialogue event, which celebrates students who embody the Aggie Core Value of Loyalty through selfless service.

Swarnabha, whose research focuses on modular multi-robot systems under the advisement of Stavros Kalafatis, was selected for his unwavering dedication to the well-being and success of the broader Aggie community.

Highlights of service

Mentorship

Guided 600+ undergraduates and built lasting educational resources for the community.

Leadership

Serves as President of the Indian Graduate Students Association (IGSA).

Student Support

Connects peers with mental health resources and campus support systems.

Research

Develops open-source robotics platforms with humanitarian and agricultural applications.

Read the full announcement at the Graduate and Professional School News.