Welcome

Welcome to the Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems (EECS) Lab! Our research is focused on AI-enhanced circuits and systems across various applications, including communication, sensing, computing, security, and biomedical fields. Our works span the design of intelligent sensory interfaces, RF/mixed-signal hardware security, and ubiquitous sensing and computing systems, as well as high-performance data converters. We are actively looking for highly-motivated talents to join the lab (details).

Our research is/was generously supported by the National Science Foundation; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; the Army Research Office; the Office of Naval Research; Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company; Apple Inc.; CMU's Data Storage Systems Center; Analog Devices, Inc.; the Air Force Research Laboratory; the Center for Education of Microchip Designers; the Army Research Laboratory; and the Naval Research Laboratory. The views contained in our work are those of ours and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies.

Contact
Vanessa Chen
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Hamerschlag Hall 2123 | 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Email: vanessachen at cmu.edu | Phone: (412)268-4044

News (Archive)

• 2026/1: Our work of a 58% PCE 2.3-GHz RF power harvester with RF-domain two-way authentication and tunable EM signature has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers. Congrats Chengyu!
• 2026/1: Hyoungjun has been selected to receive the Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award for excellence in circuit and system design. The award will be presented at the 2026 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Congrats Hyoungjun!
• 2025/12: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the San Diego Chapter, CA.
• 2025/11: Prof. Chen has been selected as an Apple New Silicon Initiative (NSI) Faculty Fellow.
• 2025/11: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the Tokyo Chapter, Japan.
• 2025/11: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the Taipei Chapter, Taiwan (at National Taiwan University in Taipei).
• 2025/11: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the Taipei Chapter, Taiwan (at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu).
• 2025/11: Our work of a current-steering 6-GHz power amplifier with extensive reconfigurability for cryogenic operation in 65nm CMOS has been accepted to the IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society.
• 2025/10: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the Hawaii Chapter, HI.
• 2025/10: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the Santa Clara Valley Chapter, CA.
• 2025/10: Prof. Chen will be organizing and chairing a forum on "Analog for AI and AI for Analog: What the Analog/RF People Can Do and Leverage in the AI Era" at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) on February 15-19, 2026 in San Francisco, CA. Please join us for the flagship conference of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS). (Conference link)
• 2025/8: Our work of a 2.4-Gb/s, 1.9-fJ/bit nested chaotic oscillator-based true random number generator with 4K to 398K operation has been accepted to the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.
• 2025/8: Our work of a 0.45 mm² 3.49 TOPS/W cryogenic deep reinforcement learning module for end-To-end integrated circuits control has been accepted to the IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society.
• 2025/8: Our work of improving neural network fault tolerance against weight attack has been accepted to the IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems.
• 2025/7: Prof. Chen has been selected to receive the College of Engineering Dean’s Early Career Fellowship. (CoE news link)
• 2025/7: Prof. Chen delivered an IEEE SSCS distinguished lecture on "AI-Enhanced RF/Mixed-Signal Circuits for Reliable Operations" at the Orange County Chapter, CA.
• 2025/6: Prof. Chen co-chaired a full-day Short Course at the 2025 VLSI Symposium: Circuits and Systems for AI and Computing.
• 2025/5: Our work of graph convolutional network (GCN) aggregation for broad-spectral object detection has been accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing. Congrats Junting!
• 2025/3: Our work of a multispectral vision sensor with embedded convolutional neural network using programmable fractional weights and nMOS-Only PWM pixels has been accepted to the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Congrats Hyoungjun!
• 2025/2: Junting has been selected to receive the Liang Ji-Dian Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship was created through the generosity of Liang Ji-Dian and it was established to help support the graduate studies of highly deserving College of Engineering PhD students. Congrats Junting!
• 2025/2: Our work of a generative-model-assisted optimizer for restoring transmission performance has been accepted to the IEEE Microelectronics Design and Test Symposium. Congrats Junting!
• 2025/2: Our work of dynamic partial reconfiguration of FPGAs for energy-efficient machine learning inference in IoT systems has been accepted to the IEEE International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design.
• 2025/2: Prof. Chen has been named a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) for the 2025-26 term, where she will be delivering invited talks on AI-enhanced RF/mixed-signal circuits, high-speed ADCs, and secure IoT to SSCS international chapters.
• 2025/1: Our work of intrusion into RF fingerprint authorized wireless communications with generative-adversarial-network-based attackers has been accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Congrats Junting!
• 2025/1: Junting has been selected to receive the Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award for excellence in circuit and system design. The award will be presented at the 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Congrats Junting!
• 2024/12: Jiachen has successfully defended his PhD Thesis. Congrats Dr. Xu!
• 2024/8: Our work of design approaches and considerations for RF fingerprint generation in power amplifiers with unequally spaced multi-tone has been accepted to the IEEE Open Journal of the Solid-State Circuits Society. Congrats Chengyu and Junting!
• 2024/8: Yuyi has officially earned her PhD degree. Congrats Dr. Shen!
• 2024/7: Our work of the reinforcement-learning-assisted power amplifier for RF fingerprint generation has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers. Congrats Jiachen, Yuyi, and Junting!
• 2024/5: Prof. Chen will be giving a tutorial on High-Speed Analog-to-Digital Converters at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) on February 16-20, 2025 in San Francisco, CA. Please join us for the flagship conference of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS). (Conference link)
• 2024/5: Jiachen won the first place of the Apple prize for his reinforcement-learning chip design. Congrats Jiachen!
• 2024/5: Prof. Chen co-taught the “Mixed-Signal RF Transmitters” session with Prof. Jeff Walling in the Tutorial of ISCAS 2024. It was the best-attended tutorial!
• 2024/3: Prof. Chen will be serving as a TPC member at IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2025. Please consider submitting your best papers to the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip! (Conference link)
• 2024/3: Yuyi has been selected to receive the Nicholas Minnici (E ’59) Dean’s Graduate Fellowship in Electrical & Computer Engineering for the 2023-2024 academic year. Congrats Yuyi!
• 2024/1: Prof. Chen will be giving a full day tutorial on Mixed-Signal RF Transmitters with Prof. David Allstot and Prof. Jeffrey Walling at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) on May 19-22 in Singapore. Please join us for the flagship conference of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society. (Conference link)
• 2024/1: Chengyu has been selected to receive the Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award for excellence in circuit and system design. The award will be presented at the 2024 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Congrats Chengyu!
• 2022/5: Prof. Chen was invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. The Frontiers of Engineering is an annual three-day meeting that brings together 100 of the nation's outstanding young engineers from industry, academia, and government to discuss pioneering technical and leading-edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. (Frontiers of Engineering Website)
• 2020/11: Prof. Chen gave a talk about real-time learning and countering of security threats in smart transportation and IoT systems in the series of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering "Faculty Insights." (Talk abstract link) (Talk video link)
• 2020/7: Prof. Chen together with Prof. Jimmy Zhu has been selected to receive an award from the NSF Secure Analog-RF Electronics and Electromagnetics (SARE) program for “Real-Time Learning and Countering of Side-Channel Emissions to Enable Secure RF and Analog Microelectronics”. (ECE news link) (Award page)
• 2019/11: Prof. Chen was invited as a panelist to discuss the future of analog/mixed-mode circuits for artificial intelligence in IEEE A-SSCC 2019. (Conference link)
• 2019/10: Prof. Chen co-orgazined an NSF workshop on Security in RF/Analog Microelectronics and Electromagnetics. In the workshop she moderated a panel to discuss the enabling security primitives and features in RF/analog domain through the exploration of useful device properties. (Workshop link)
• 2019/9: Prof. Chen has been selected to receive a 3-year award of $655,043 from the NSF SpecEES program for “Trusted Frequency-Agile Transceiver Architectures for Secure and Energy-Efficient Communication”. (ECE news link) (Award page)
• 2018/12: Prof. Chen has been selected to receive the NSF CAREER Award for “Bio-Inspired Sensory Interfaces Incorporating Embedded Classification and Encryption”. The 5-year $500,000 CAREER Award is one of the most prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation for early-career faculty in science and engineering. (CMU CoE news link) (OSU ECE news link) (OSU onCampus Today link) (OSU CoE news link) (Award page)

Last update: 1/8/2026