About

Born into an ordinary family, Zhenlin Pei developed resilience early in life. Before university, he combined rigorous academic preparation with a significant personal transformation through long-distance running, cultivating discipline and endurance, qualities that later underpinned his academic and industrial achievements.

He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University and the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), respectively. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alabama (UA).

His research interests include energy-efficient computing systems from hardware to software, AI applications through advanced CAD/EDA, DTCO, and STCO, edge AI hardware design with privacy, neuromorphic computing systems, AI-driven VLSI optimization, IC design, circuit synthesis, verification, emerging interconnects/ beyond-CMOS/ memory technologies, and physical design.

During his Ph.D., he collaborated with the IMEC to develop the CACTI++ framework, which bridges key gaps in rapid EDA-based co-design and co-optimization from the transistor to the system level, including hardware and software. He was a senior design engineer in IP Group R&D for tapeout at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. for four years, gaining expertise in the full RTL-to-GDSII workflow.