University Of Pittsburgh Recommendation: Fill & Download for Free

Top U.S. research university in EDA(Section #1)UC Berkeley EECS is a clear winner by far.Their research spans from electronic system-level (ESL) design and verification to technology CAD (TCAD). No other research university has that range of research teams/labs/groups that span so many EDA topics. The collaborators of UC Berkeley's faculty and students include many of their alumni, the academic descendants of Berkeley EECS alumni, and industry and academic collaborators from all over the world. Two of their faculty members, Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and the late Prof. A. Richard Newton contributed greatly to the founding of two of the three giants in electronic design automation (EDA): Synopsys (company) and Cadence Design Systems (company). Their alumni have become successful faculty members in world-class research universities, like MIT and Stanford. Their graduate classes in EDA also span from TCAD (e.g., device modeling) and physical design to logic synthesis and verification, and also from ESL design and cyber-physical systems (CPS) to Bio Design Automation and VLSI formal verification (e.g., sequential equivalence checking).Good U.S. research universities in EDA(Section #2)Off the top of my head, other good research universities that have good EDA labs (at least 2-3 faculty members working in EDA) and multiple graduate-level EDA classes include (not listed in any order):University of Michigan: physical design, logic synthesis, EDA for quantum computing, logic verification, and post-silicon debugging. Prof. Igor Markov is a professor at Michigan's EECS department.Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Numerical techniques (e.g., nonlinear Model Order Reduction, integral equation solvers) for EDA, including circuit simulation, interconnect modeling, and layout/parasitic extraction; check out the Computational Prototyping Group at MIT's legendary Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). Prof. Arvind and Prof. Srini Devadas have worked on problems in ESL, and logic synthesis and logic verification.Carnegie Mellon University. They work on problems in analog/RF and mixed-signal (AMS/RF) CAD, Design for Manufacturability (DFM), EDA tools for network-on-chips (NoC)... They also have graduate classes in physical design and logic synthesis/verification.Cornell University: EDA tools for Asynchronous Circuits, TCAD, physical design, ESL, VLSI testingGeorgia Institute of Technology: Nanoscale 3-D physical design and circuit simulation (or rather, numerical techniques for EDA).Northwestern University: physical design, thermal-aware EDA tools, and FPGA CAD tools.Purdue University: VLSI testing, and a range of topics addressing nanoscale challenges concerning variability and reliability, model order reduction for VLSI circuits and systems, physical design, and interconnect modeling.Stanford University: range of "non-traditional" EDA projects spanning multiple traditional EDA topics, TCAD, EDA tools addressing reliability concerns, and VLSI testing. They also used to work on VLSI formal verification.Texas A&M University (TAMU): Physical design, numerical techniques for EDA (including power grid verification) and AMS/RF CAD, NoC, EDA tools addressing fault-tolerance, DFM, logic synthesis, and ESL... Texas A&M University (TAMU) is not as famous as the other universities, but it does produce stellar research papers. For example, Prof. Peng Li has won 4 best paper awards at Design Automation Conference (DAC) and International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) in the last 10 years, which is 20% of the best paper awards for DAC and ICCAD in this time frame.University of California, San Diego: DFM, physical design, ESL, and VLSI testingUniversity of California, Los Angeles: physical design, logic synthesis, ESL (including high-level synthesis), DFM, and numerical techniques for EDA (including model order reduction and interconnect modeling).The University of Texas at Austin: DFM, physical design, VLSI formal verification, VLSI testing, and TCADAlso, see Choosing a Graduate Program in VLSI Design & Related Areas: Things to Consider.Competitive U.S. research universities in EDA (Honorable Mention)(Section #3)Honorable mention:University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: numerical techniques for EDA (including model order reduction, layout/parasitic extraction, and interconnect modeling)... I may be wrong, but I reckon they have other stuff. However, they do not seem to be prominent in EDA, even though UIUC is a world-class research university.Brown University: EDA tools for thermal analysis/design, VLSI testing, and some other topicsBoston University: There are 2-3 faculty members working in EDA there, including Prof. Douglas Densmore work works in Bio Design Automation.University of California, Irvine: Has a strong research lab/group in ESL, including high-level synthesisUniversity of California, Riverside: numerical techniques for EDA (including model order reduction, layout/parasitic extraction, and interconnect modeling), application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) synthesis and design methodologies, and low-power EDA. They may have professors working on ESL and logic synthesis, too.University of California, Santa Barbara: VLSI testing, logic verification, and physical design. They may also be working on logic synthesis.University of Southern California: physical design, physical synthesis, logic synthesis, logic verification, EDA tools for Asynchronous Circuits, EDA for Quantum Computing, ESL, VLSI testing, EDA tools for low-power design, and NoC.University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: physical design and physical synthesis, logic synthesis and verification, and numerical techniques for EDA (to some extent)The University of Utah: Design automation for Cyber-Physical Systems, Bio Design Automation, EDA tools for Asynchronous Circuits, and VLSI formal verificationUniversity of Wisconsin - Madison: physical design, physical synthesis, DFM, EDA for reconfigurable logic (e.g., FPGA), post-silicon debugging, low-power EDA tools, EDA tools for fault-tolerance, and VLSI testingSufficiently Competitive U.S. research universities in EDA(Section #4)Other research universities that may interest you:Arizona State University: Strong TCAD group in device modelingColumbia University: EDA tools for Asynchronous CircuitsDuke University: Design automation for Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) (microelectromechanical systems) and digital microfluidic devices (biomedical devices), and VLSI testingUniversity of Arizona: A bunch of faculty members in VLSI testing, interconnect modeling, DFM, NoC, among other thingsUniversity of California, Davis: ESL groupUniversity of California, Santa Cruz: physical design groupUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst: Kinda like University of Arizona; it has a bunch of decent faculty members working on different things... TCAD, VLSI testing, and EDA for reconfigurable logic (e.g., FPGA)University of Notre Dame: ESL???University of Pennsylvania: EDA tools for nanoscale reconfigurable logicUniversity of Rochester: Lone maverick working on numerical techniques for EDA (e.g., interconnect modeling), physical synthesis, physical design, and AMS/RF CADIowa State University: Physical designColorado State University (specifically, Colorado State University ): ESLAuburn University: VLSI testing. TCAD, and computational electromagneticsUniversity of Maryland, College Park: TCAD, approximate computing, energy-efficient EDA tools, and DFMNorth Carolina State University: AMS/RF CAD, and random topics in EDA, just like University of Massachusetts, Amherst and University of ArizonaUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: EDA tools for Asynchronous CircuitsStony Brook University: ESL and AMS/RF CADPortland State University (Portland State University): VLSI formal verification, VLSI testing, and ESL (and Bio Design Automation???)University of Pittsburgh: mixed-technology design automation tools, including design automation tools for OptoelectronicsSouthern Methodist University: VLSI testing, logic synthesis, and logic verificationDrexel University: physical design and NoCDecent/"Decent" U.S. research universities in EDA(Section #5)If you can't get into the aforementioned universities, here are some other universities that may be of interest to you. They have at least one lone faculty member working in EDA.Southern Illinois University CarbondaleUniversity of IowaUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC): Power modelingMichigan State University: Computational electromagneticsMichigan Technological University: TCAD and numerical techniques for EDAMissouri University of Science & Technology: electromagnetic compatibility, like signal integrity analysisUniversity of North Carolina at Charlotte: AMS/RF CADUniversity at Buffalo: VLSI testingUniversity of Cincinnati: lone ranger working on digtial EDA, who had worked on AMS/RF CAD tools.Utah State UniversityThe University of Texas at San Antonio: physical design, DFM, and physical synthesisUniversity of North Texas: AMS/RF CAD based on meta-heuristicsIllinois Institute of Technology Chicago - Illinois Tech: power grid simulation of Very-Large-Scale Integration systemsUniversity of South CarolinaWell, if you are considering these places, you may as well check out opportunities in Europe (e.g., see Computer Science Programs in Europe, Pasquale Ferrara's answer to When recruiting Software Engineer/Computer Science majors for US companies, what international universities are on par with MIT/Stanford?, and Pasquale Ferrara's answer to Which university is best to recruit computer science majors from and why?) and Taiwan (e.g., National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University). Also, Federal University of Rio Grande Do Sul (UFRGS) is also making some noise in EDA in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (and perhaps Seoul National University) seems like a reasonable choice.For graduate programs in EDA, I would strongly recommend that you do not go to graduate school in India, Singapore, or Australia.If you want me to make a recommendation, if you cannot get into a good/competitive U.S. research university in EDA (see sections 1-3, or perhaps sections 1-4), it may be worth your while to go look at other competitive research universities outside the U.S., such as National Taiwan University (NTU). NTU has done well (placed top 3 regularly in the last 5 years) in EDA programming/research contests, such as the ISPD programming contest and the CADathlon (held before the start of ICCAD). See Learning about Physical Design outside of National Taiwan University about my blog post titled, “Learning about Physical Design outside of National Taiwan University.”

It is located in one of the nicest parts of Pittsburgh (a very liveable/affordable city) and has all of the features of an excellent state university. Tuition is obnoxiously high, but welcome to Pennsylvania.However, I would not recommend calling it University of Pitt (or Pitts), that sounds pretty bad. It's either the University of Pittsburgh, or just Pitt.

I want to share my story: I took the SAT once. I got a 1490 on the SAT (EBRW 710 and Math 780). I got accepted at Johns Hopkins University and Carnegie Mellon. I also got a full tuition scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh.However, the 1490 is not enough on its own. There were a million other factors that affected my application.1- Do you have time to retake the SAT? If you do, will you be able to increase your score significantly?Because it is easy to go from 1200 to 1400 but much much harder to go from 1490 to anything higher. Ask yourself if the effort is worth the outcome.2- What about the million other things that matter in admissions? How is you GPA? Your letters of recommendation? Your essays? Your academic course rigor? Your extracurriculars? SAT Subject Tests?Ask yourself if the time spent to raise your SAT score by 20 points (in your situation) would be useful improving something else in your application or not.3- If you are going for top colleges, I would recommend looking for something that makes you stand out. Nobody except you knows what THAT thing is. But I strongly recommend looking for it.