Curriculum Vitae of Zheng ZHANG

Bldg 36-732, Research Lab of Electronics, Dept. of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Email: z [email protected], Tel: +1-617-253-2589, Homepage: http://www.mit.edu/∼z zhang
Citizenship: P. R. China
Curriculum Vitae of Zheng ZHANG
OBJECTIVE
Seeking for a research position related to uncertainty quantification (including forward and inverse
problems) and tensor analysis (or multilinear algebra) with emerging engineering applications.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Numerical methods for uncertainty quantification (including forward and inverse problems);
Tensor analysis (or multilinear algebra) for high-dimensional engineering problems;
Applying the above techniques to solve computational modeling, simulation and optimization problems in emerging engineering fields (e.g., renewable energy, nanophotonics, power electronics, smart
city, big data, MRI, artificial intelligence).
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
09/2010–02/2015 (expected)
Thesis topic: uncertainty quantification for integrated circuits, MEMS and silicon photonics.
Thesis adviser: Prof. Luca Daniel, academic advisor: Prof. Jacob K. White
Brief description: I have developed some fast stochastic spectral methods for simulating integrated
circuits, MEMS and silicon photonics with process/design uncertainties. Low-dimensional, highdimensional, hierarchical and correlated problems have been investigated. The proposed algorithms
have been implemented in my own in-house SPICE-level integrated circuit simulator with various
semiconductor device models, as well as the commercial system-level MEMS simulator MEMS+,
for both frequency-domain and time-domain (including both transient and periodic steady-state)
simulations. For most examples, a speedup factor of 102 × to 103 × have been observed compared
with traditional Monte Carlo algorithms.
M.Phil. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the University of Hong Kong
2008–2010
Thesis: “Passivity assessment and model order reduction for linear time-invariant descriptor systems in VLSI circuit simulation.” (Li Ka Shing Prize for University Best M.Phil/Ph.D Theses
Award.)
Brief description: I developed some novel theories and numerical algorithms for characterizing
and enforcing the passivity of LTI descriptor systems that describe the networks of VLSI interconnects and power grids. Some novel model-order reduction algorithms were developed to speed up
the simulation of large-scale linear circuits.
B. Eng. in Electronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
2004–2008
Thesis title: “Low-power CMOS design of a 1-GHz low-voltage differential signaling interface.”
ACADEMIC HONORS
1. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award.
2014
2. IEEE CICC Best Invited Paper Award Nomination.
2014
3. IEEE/ACM William J. McCalla ICCAD Best Paper Award Nomination.
2011
4. Li Ka Shing Prize1 (Best M.Phil/PhD Theses Awards), the University of Hong Kong.
2011
5. ACM/IEEE ASP-DAC Best Paper Award Nomination.
2011
6. Mathworks PhD Fellowship from the EECS Department of MIT.
2010-2011
1 The Li Ka Shing Prizes are awarded annually to two MPhil and four PhD graduates who had produced excellent
theses within the two faculty groups at the University of Hong Kong– Group A comprising the Faculties of Architecture,
Arts, Business & Economics, Education, Law and Social Sciences; and Group B Comprising the Faculties of Dentistry,
Engineering, Medicine and Science.
OTHER EXPERIENCES
Visiting Scholar at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
06/2014-07/2014
♦ Uncertainty quantification for oscillator circuits with noise and process variations.
Host: Prof. Paolo Maffezzoni, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria
Visiting Scholar at Brown University, Providence, RI
06/2013-08/2013
♦ Uncertainty quantification for high-dimensional stochastic problems (with up to 200 random
parameters).
Host: Prof. George Karniadakis, Division of Applied Mathematics
Summer Intern at Maxim-IC, Colorado Springs, CO
06/2012–09/2012
♦ PDE-based parasitic inductance extraction for high-speed analog/RF IC design.
Mentor: Dr. Geir Ostrem
Summer Intern at Coventor, Inc., Cambridge, MA
06/2011–09/2011
♦ R&D of numerical methods for MEMS simulation. Developed algorithms have been tested by
real-world industrial cases and commercialized in the MEMS/IC co-design tool MEMS+2.1.
Mentor: Dr. Mattan Kamon (Chief Technologist)
Visiting Scholar at the University of California, San Diego, CA
08/2009–12/2009
♦ Numerical simulation and model order reduction for power grid circuits in digital VLSI design.
Host: Prof. Chung-Kuan Cheng, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
REFEREED PUBLICATIONS
Journal Articles
1. Z. Zhang, X. Yang, I. Oseledets, G. E. Karniadakis and L. Daniel, “Enabling high-dimensional
hierarchical uncertainty quantification by ANOVA and tensor-train decomposition,” IEEE Trans.
Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, submitted 06/2014 (arXiv:1407.3023).
2. Z. Zhang∗ , N. Farnoosh∗ , T. Klemas and L. Daniel, “Maximum-entropy density estimation for
MRI stochastic surrogate models,” IEEE Antenn. Wireless Propag. Lett., accepted. (∗ equally
contributing authors)
3. P. Maffezzoni, B. Bahr, Z. Zhang, and L. Daniel, “Analysis and design of weakly coupled LC
oscillator arrays based on phase-domain macromodels,” IEEE Trans. Computer-Aided Design of
Integrated Circuits and Systems, submitted April 2014.
4. Z. Zhang, T. A. El-Moselhy, I. M. Elfadel and L. Daniel, “Calculation of generalized polynomialchaos basis functions and Gauss quadrature rules in hierarchical uncertainty quantification,”
IEEE Trans. Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 33, no. 5, pp.
728-740, May 2014. (TCAD popular paper.)
5. Z. Zhang, M. Kamon and L. Daniel, “Continuation-based pull-in and lift-off simulation algorithms for microelectromechanical devices,” IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 10
pages, accepted for publication.
6. P. Maffezzoni, Z. Zhang, and L. Daniel, “A study of deterministic jitter in crystal oscillators,”
IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 1044-1054, April 2014.
(TCAS-1 popular paper.)
7. Z. Zhang, T. A. El-Moselhy, P. Maffezzoni, I. M. Elfadel and L. Daniel, “Efficient uncertainty
quantification for the periodic steady state of forced and autonomous circuits,” IEEE Trans.
Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, vo. 60, no. 10, pp. 687-691, Oct. 2013.
8. Z. Zhang, T. El-Moselhy, I. M. Elfadel and L. Daniel, “Stochastic testing method for transistorlevel uncertainty quantification based on generalized polynomial chaos,” IEEE Trans. ComputerAided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vo. 32, no. 10, pp. 1533-1545, Oct. 2013.
(Donald O. Pederson TCAD Best Paper Award, TCAD popular paper.)
9. Z. Zhang and N. Wong, “Canonical projector techniques for analyzing descriptor systems,” Intl.
Journal of Control, Automation and Systems, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 71-83, Feb. 2014.
10. X. Wang, Z. Zhang, Q. Wang and N. Wong, “Gramian-based model order reduction of parameterized time-delay systems,” Intl. Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, Dec. 2012
11. Y. Wang, Z. Zhang, C. K. Koh, G. Shi, G. K. H. Pang and N. Wong, “Passivity enforcement
for descriptor systems via matrix pencil perturbation,” IEEE Trans. Computer-Aided Design of
Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 532-545, April 2012.
12. Z. Zhang and N. Wong, “An efficient projector-based passivity test for descriptor systems,”
IEEE Trans. Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 29, no. 8, pp.
1203-1214, Aug. 2010.
13. Z. Zhang and N. Wong, “Passivity check of S-parameter descriptor systems via S-parameter
generalized Hamiltonian methods,” IEEE Trans. Advanced Packaging, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 10341042, Nov. 2010.
14. N. Wong and Z. Zhang, “Discussion of “A half-size singularity test matrix for fast and reliable
passivity assessment of rational models”,” IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 25, no. 2, pp.
1212-1213, Apr. 2010.
15. Z. Zhang and N. Wong, “Passivity test of immittance descriptor systems based on generalized
Hamiltonian methods,” IEEE Trans. Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, vol. 57, no. 1, pp.
61-65, Jan 2010.
Conference Proceedings
1. Z. Zhang, X. Yang, G. Marucci, P. Maffezzoni, I. M. Elfadel, G. Karnidadakis and L. Daniel,
“Stochastic testing simulator for integrated circuits and MEMS: Hierarchical and sparse techniques,” IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conf. (CICC), 8 pages, San Jose, CA, Sept. 2014.
(Invited Paper, Nominated for Best Invited Paper)
2. T.-W. Weng, Z. Zhang, Z. Su, M. R. Watts and L. Daniel, “Fast stochastic simulation of silicon
photonics with non-Gaussian correlated process variations,” IEEE Topic Meeting on Microwave
Photonics, 3 pages, Sapporo, Japan, Oct. 2014. under review
3. Z. Zhang, I. M. Elfadel and L. Daniel, “Uncertainty quantification for integrated circuits:
Stochastic spectral methods,” IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), pp.
803-810, San Jose, CA, Nov. 2013. (Invited paper)
4. M. Kamon, S. Maity, D. Dereus, Z. Zhang, S. Cunningham, S. Kim, J. McKillop, A. Morris, G.
Lorenz and L. Daniel, “New simulation and experimental methodology for analyzing pull-in and
release in MEMS switches,” IEEE Int. Conf. Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems
(Transducers & Eurosensors XXVII), pp. 2373-2376, Barcelona, Spain, June 2013.
5. Z. Zhang, M. Kamon and L. Daniel, “Continuation-based pull-in and lift-off simulation for
microelectromechanical system design,” SRC TECHCON, 4 pages, Austin, TX, Sept. 2012.
6. Z. Zhang, I. M. Elfadel and L. Daniel, “Model order reduction of fully parameterized systems by
recursive least square optimization,” IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD),
pp. 523-530, San Jose, CA, Nov. 2011. (Best Paper Nomination.)
7. Z. Zhang, X. Hu, C.-K. Cheng and N. Wong, “A block-diagonal structured model reduction
scheme for power grid networks,” IEEE/ACM Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE),
pp. 44-49, Grenoble, France, Mar. 2011.
8. Z. Zhang, Q. Wang, N. Wong and L. Daniel, “A moment-matching scheme for the passivitypreserving model order reduction of indefinite descriptor systems with possible polynomial parts,”
IEEE/ACM Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), pp. 49-55,
Yokohama, Japan , Jan. 2011. (Best Paper Nomination)
9. X. Wang, Q. Wang, Z. Zhang, Q. Chen and N. Wong, “Balanced truncation for time-delay
systems via approximate gramians,” IEEE/ACM Asia and South Pacific Design Automation
Conference (ASP-DAC), pp 56-60., Yokohama, Japan, Jan. 2011.
10. C. Y. Lin, Z. Zhang, N. Wong and H. K.-H. So,“Design Space Exploration for Sparse MatrixMatrix Multiplication on FPGAs,” Proc. IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. Field Programmable Technology
(FPT), pp. 369-372, Beijing, China, Dec. 2010.
11. Y. Wang, Z. Zhang, C.-K. Koh, G. K. H. Pang and N. Wong, “PEDS: Passivity enforcement for
descriptor systems via Hamiltonian-symplectic matrix pencil perturbation,” in Proc. IEEE/ACM
Intl. Conf. Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD), pp. 800-807, San Jose, CA, Nov. 2010.
12. C. Y. Lin, Z. Zhang, N. Wong and H. K.-H. So, “Power-delay and energy-delay tradeoffs in
sparse matrix-matrix multiplication on FPGAs,” in Proc. Int. Workshop on Highly Efficient
Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies (HEART), pp., Tsukuba, Japan, June 2010.
13. Z. Zhang and N. Wong, “An extension of the generalized Hamiltonian method to S-parameter
descriptor systems,” IEEE/ACM Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASPDAC), pp. 43-47, Taipei, Jan 2010.
14. Z. Zhang, C.-U. Lei and N. Wong, “GHM: A generalized Hamiltonian method for passivity test
of impedance/admittance descriptor systems,” IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. Computer Aided Design
(ICCAD), pp. 767-773, San Jose, CA, Nov 2009.
Grant Proposal Writing
I have contributed to the following grant proposals:
1. MIT-Skoltech Collaboration Grant: Tensor methods for high-dimensional complex systems, with
Prof. L. Daniel (MIT) and Prof. I. V. Oseledets (SkolTech of Russia)
02/2014
2. MIT-Italy Progetto Rocca Project: Development of macro-modeling and simulation techniques
for uncertainty quantification and noise analysis in oscillatory devices (24 months), with Prof. L.
Daniel (MIT) and Prof. P. Maffezzoni (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
05/2013
3. MIT-Great China Collaboration Grant: Deterministic and stochastic modeling, simulation and
reduction techniques for analog/RF circuits (24 months), with Prof. L. Daniel (MIT) and Prof.
N. Wong (University of Hong Kong)
05/2012
4. General Research Fund of Hong Kong: Advanced nonlinear parametric compact modeling techniques for analog/RF simulation (36 month), with Prof. N. Wong (Univ. of Hong Kong) 06/2010
5. General Research Fund of Hong Kong: Canonical projector techniques with applications in VLSI
modeling and smulation (24 month), with Prof. N. Wong (University of Hong Kong)
2009
Teaching Experience
1. Lecture “Uncertainty Quantification of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems”, given during Prof. L.
Daniel’s invited PhD course at Politecnico di Milano, Italy.
07/2014
2. Lecture “Numerical Simulation of Periodic Steady States of Dynamic Systems”, given at MIT
course 6.336 (graduate level)
Fall 2012, Fall 2013
3. TA of MIT 6.336: Introduction to Numerical Simulation (graduate course).
Fall 2011
4. TA of HKU ELEC 3612: “VLSI Design Principles” (undergraduate level).
Spring 2009
RELAVENT COURSES
Numerical Modeling and Simulation for ODE and PDE (2 courses), Circuit Design (2 courses),
Linear and Nonlinear Dynamical Systems (2 courses), Numerical Optimization (1 course), Machine
Learning (1 course, listener), Stochastic Modeling and Inference (1 course, listener)
Reference Letters
Available upon request.

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