The 4th IEEE Circuits and Systems Standards Activities Workshop
Open RTL-to-GDSII Flow Standards Workshop 

Keynote Speaker

Speakers, Panelists, and Program/Technical Chairs

Name: Edmund Humenberger

Affiliation: Symbioticeda, Austria

Topic: Boosting Design Productivity with True Open and Free Data Formats

Abstract: Electronic design automation (EDA) productivity suffers from tool bugs, faulty data import/export, and binary format parsing difficulties. Proprietary formats cause vendor lock-in and stranded designs. This talk argues for open, free formats to enhance efficiency, tool interoperability, and ecosystem growth.

Text-based standards are incomplete and ambiguous; open reference implementations serve as the gold standard. Examples from RISC-V, PCB design, Blender, VLC, simulators, waveform viewers, and PDKs demonstrate benefits like faster debugging and better collaboration. Attendees will gain adoption strategies, aligning with IEEE's focus on innovation and standards.

Bio: Edmund Humenberger is the CEO and Co-Founder of Symbiotic EDA, Vienna, Austria, a company specializing in open-source Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools for Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. With over 25 years of experience in the software, IT, and electronics industries, his work focuses on advancing open-source FPGA toolchains, including Yosys and nextpnr, which are widely adopted in industry and academia worldwide. Mr. Humenberger has led notable open source projects such as Fast_Ethernet_Switch, which are used by numerous educational institutions globally. He started the Open Source Design Automation (OSDA) Workshop (https://osda.gitlab.io/), fostering collaboration in open-source EDA development. An active advocate for open-source technologies since the 1990s, he has organized Linux conferences and served as an open-source expert for the European Commission. His contributions include the development of FPGA tools like Project IceStorm, openXC7. Mr. Humenberger is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including Embedded World and ORConf, and holds expertise in project management, entrepreneurship, and business development.

Name:  Hai (Helen) Li

Affiliation: Duke University, USA

Topic: Transforming EDA with Foundational Models: From Autonomous Design Agents to Post-training Customization

Abstract: In this talk, we present a review of how foundational models are transforming electronic design automation (EDA) across the entire design stack: from system-level architecture to RTL generation, logic synthesis, physical implementation and design for manufacturing. Drawing on insights from recent research contributions, we examine three dominant methodological trends: autonomous agent frameworks, domain adaptation via fine-tuning and specialized tokenization, and applicationspecific customization. We will highlight how multi-modal representations, which blend textual, graph-based, and visual circuit data, are enabling unprecedented design capabilities, with domain-adapted models consistently outperforming general-purpose counterparts. We hope our talk could offer a forward-looking perspective on the post-training era of foundational models (LLMs and diffusion models) in EDA and provide practical guidance for researchers and practitioners aiming to leverage these technologies for next-generation chip designs.

Bio: Hai (Helen) Li is the Marie Foote Reel E’46 Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Duke University. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University, and her Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. Her research interests include neuromorphic circuits and systems for brain-inspired computing, machine learning acceleration and trustworthy AI, conventional and emerging memory design and architecture, and software and hardware co-design. Dr. Li served/serves as the Associate Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor for multiple IEEE and ACM journals. She was the General Chair or Technical Program Chair of multiple IEEE/ACM conferences and the Technical Program Committee member of over 30 international conference series. Dr. Li has received many awards, including the IEEE Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, Ten Year Retrospective Influential Paper Award from ICCAD, TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Fellowship from Germany, ELATE Fellowship, nine best paper awards, and another ten best paper nominations from IEEE/ACM. Dr. Li is a fellow of IEEE, ACM, and NAI.

Name: Prouvee Jerome

Affiliation:  Cea Leti, France

Bio: Jerome Prouvee received the Degree in engineering and M.S. Degree from INPG Grenoble, France in electronics and radiofrequencies in 2000. After an internship in model extraction at STMicroelectronics, Crolles, France., and his military service in the RF lab of ENSTA Paris, he joins the emerging RFIC design team of CEA Leti in 2001. He spent 14 years in testing, mostly specializing in RF R&D IC characterization, test projects management and industrialization tests. He changed to custom and RF IC layout in 2014. He now splits his time between IC layout and project management. His main technical interest involves RF and mixed signal layout and custom/analog IC TOP assembly.

Name: Mohamed A Abdelghany

Affiliation:  German University in Cairo (GUC), Egypt

Bio: Mohamed A. Abd El Ghany received the BSc and the Master. degrees in electronics and communications engineering from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, in 2000 and 2006, respectively, and Ph.D. degree in the area of high-performance VLSI/IC design from the German University- GUC, Egypt in 2010. He awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Germany. He is currently working as a Professor and Vice-Dean at GUC, Egypt. He is the author of about 140 papers, two book chapters, two books in the fields of high performance and low- power VLSI/IC design and network on chip and Artificial Intelligence in Electronic Circuits. He is an IEEE senior member since 2015. He was a Guest Editor Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Springer in 2021. He is a member of the steering committee, a reviewer and program committee member of many IEEE international journals and conferences.

Name:  Boon Chong Ang

Affiliation:  INTEL, Malysia. 

Bio: Ang Boon Chong was born in Penang, Malaysia, in 1978. He received the B.E. degree in microelectronic engineering from the University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia, in 2002, and MBA from Open University Malaysia, Malaysia in 2014. He is currently affiliated with Intel Malaysia, been engaged in a wide variety of advanced nodes and methodology evaluation. He has published over 40 papers as well as delivered 2 invited talks in 2 countries. He is currently a tech lead within the organization as well as IEEE senior member. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and currently serves as Chair-Elect (2024–present) of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, Standards Activities Subdivision (SASD).

Name: Hossam O. Ahmed

Affiliation:  American University of the Middle East (AUM), Kuwait.

Bio: (M'14–SM'21) received the B.S. degree in communications and computer engineering from El-Shorouk Academy, Egypt, in 2007. He completed his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronics and electrical communications engineering at Ain Shams University, Egypt, in 2015 and 2019, respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Engineering, American University of the Middle East (AUM), Kuwait. His research focuses on hardware security and emerging random number generation techniques, including True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) and Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs), as well as SPADbased photon-timing systems and Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs). His broader interests include FPGA/ASIC design, post-quantum cryptography, wireless sensor networks, AI hardware accelerators, intelligent control, and fuzzy systems. Dr. Ahmed is an active voting member of the Standards Activities Subdivision (SASD), IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, and contributes to the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) (2024–present).

Name: Ahmed Madian

Affiliation:  Nile University, Egypt

Bio: Ahmed Madian (SM'12) is currently a professor and director for Electronics and Computer Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, NILE University, Giza, Egypt on leave from the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority. He is the former director of Microelectronics System Design Master Program from 2015 -2020. Also, He has been the director of Nanoelectronics Integrated System Design Research Center (NISC) since 2016 -2023. He has published more than 200 papers in international conferences and journals with h-index 30. Also, he served on many technical and organizing committees of many international conferences. He received many research grants as Principal Investigator (PI), CO-PI, or Consultant from different national/international organizations. Also, he is a member of the National Radio of Science Committee (NRSC), ASRT since 2018-now. He is a member of the Information Technology and Communication Council, ASRT from 2021 to now. Dr. Madian is senior member of the IEEE. He is currently the IEEE Egypt Section chair and served as the IEEE Egypt section secretary/conference coordinator and member of the ExCom from 2020 – 2023. He served as technical program co-chair of many IEEE international conferences and as organizing committee of many IEEE events and student’s competition. He is a member of the steering committee of many IEEE conferences. He served in the higher council of Communication and Information Technology, Egyptian Academy for Science, research, and Technology (ASRT). He has been elected as a voting member of IEEE CASS Standards Activities subdivision. He organized many awareness sessions for proposal writing and fundraising for different IEEE units.

Important Information

  • 17 November 2025
  • Kenzi Rose Garden, Marrakech, Morocco.
  • In conjunction with the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS 2025)

ORFSW 2025