504 Dunham Lab
Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science
10 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520-8267

Office: (203) 432-7040
Fax: (203) 432-7481



If you are an EECS major at Yale and have questions, please send me an email so that we can find a time to meet.

My group is part of the Computer Systems Lab at Yale. We are also members of the Wu-Tsai Institute where we are part of the Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence center.

I primarily work on asynchronous VLSI design and architecture. I am also interested in a number of other subjects including concurrency, formal methods, programming language semantics, design automation, and cognitive systems.

Publications (selected) / News / Bio / CV

My teaching over the years has been in the general area of computer systems. I will be teaching EENG 426/CPSC 448/ENAS 876 in Fall 2024.

Class project chips!

In terms of why I teach classes the way I do, I like some of the opinions in EWD 1305.

Prior to joining Yale, I was on the Cornell faculty from 1998 to 2016 where I received the Tau Beta Pi and Cornell Society of Engineers Excellence in Teaching Award (2000), the IEEE Teacher of the Year Award (2001), the Sonny Yau '72 Excellence in Teaching Award (2001), the Michael Tien '72 Excellence in Teaching Award (2004), the Ruth and Joel Spira Excellence in Teaching Award (2005, 2009), the Kenneth A. Goldman '71 Excellence in Teaching Award (2012), and the Cornell Tech Professor of the Year Award (2016). I was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow (2014)—Cornell's highest teaching award—for "a sustained record of effective, inspiring, and distinguished teaching of undergraduate students."

We have developed open-source design automation tools for the design and implementation of asynchronous circuits and systems. To demonstrate the tools as well as introduce asynchronous design to students/researchers, I have been regularly organizing a summer school on asynchronous design. The content has been archived (slides, video, and demo examples) and is available.

• 2022: first summer school (content)
• 2024: second summer school (content)

Major service activities at Yale include:

• Deputy Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, School of Engineering and Applied Science, 7/2024-
• Deputy Dean for Research, School of Engineering and Applied Science, 1/2023-6/2024
• Member, Strategic Planning Committee for the School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2020-2021
• Member, Physical Science and Engineering Building Planning Committee, 2020-
• Member, Physical Science and Engineering Instrumentation Task Force, 2020-2021
• Member, Yale Instrumentation Steering Committee, 2019-2020
• Member, Physical Sciences and Engineering Area Committee and Tenure and Appointments Committee, 7/2018-6/2020
• Member, FAS Senate (and Executive Committee), 7/2017-6/2019
• Started the Computer Systems Lab, 2017

Prior to joining the Yale faculty, I was on the Cornell faculty for 18 years. The following lists some of my major service activities at Cornell.

• Associate Dean for Research, Cornell Tech, 1/2015-4/2015
• Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Cornell Tech, 11/2012-12/2014
• Co-Chair (with David Shmoys), Academic Planning Committee for Cornell Tech, 2/2012-8/2013
• Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, College of Engineering, Cornell, 1/2010-6/2010 (interim), 7/2010-6/2012
• Member, Technology Transfer Advisory Committee, Cornell, 7/2008-12/2013
• Started the Computer Systems Lab (with Mark Heinrich), 1998

You can find out a bit about me if you like. Here are some quotations, puzzles, and poems. Some local FreeBSD tweaks.

I founded Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, the multi-GHz FPGA company that was based on asynchronous FPGA technology developed by my research group (John Teifel's Ph.D. thesis).