Dr. Guang R. Gao Named Recipient of 2017 IEEE Computer Society B. Ramakrishna Rau Award

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 24 August 2017 - The IEEE Computer Society awards committee selected Dr. Guang R. Gao to receive the 2017 B. Ramakrishna Rau Award for significant contributions in the field of computer microarchitecture and compiler code generation.

A faculty member at the University of Delaware since 1996, Gao is an endowed distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, and is an ACM and IEEE Fellow.

In the B. Ramakrishna Rau Award citation, Gao was recognized “for contributions to compiler techniques and microarchitectures for instruction-level and thread-level parallel computing.”

Gao devoted a majority of his research and academic activities to pursuing R&D in dataflow program execution models and architecture/compiler innovations. Gao and his students' work has shown the fundamental value of the dataflow model of computation in addressing the challenges and bottleneck encountered in parallel computer systems under the classical von-Neumann architectures model.

Further, Gao has led a series of parallel architecture and system projects where various aspects of dataflow models are explored and realized in high-performance computers – ranging from innovations in programming paradigms and microarchitecture design, to system software technology (compilers, runtime, etc.) and multicore chip hardware design methodology.  Gao has made unique and significant contributions in compiler techniques and microarchitectures for instruction-level and thread-level parallelism.

In the mid-2000s, Gao’s entrepreneurial efforts were recognized for the successful application of his academic R&D results to a significant supercomputing system project, known as IBM Cyclops-64 Supercomputer; one of the largest supercomputers based on large-scale many-core chip technology at that time.

Gao received his PhD degree in 1986 in computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the first from mainland China.  He is an alumni of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The 2017 Rau award will be presented at the MICRO-50 Conference on Monday, 16 October 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts.

A certificate and a $2000 honorarium are awarded by the Computer Society in recognition of important work related to microarchitectural technology, including both hardware and compiler optimization.

The B. Ramakrishna Rau Award, established in memory of B. Ramakrishna Rau, recognizes Rau’s distinguished career in promoting and expanding the use of innovative computer microarchitecture techniques, including his innovation in compiler technology, his leadership in academic and industrial computer architecture, and his extremely high personal and ethical standards.

Further information about the award, including a list of past recipients, is available at www.computer.org/volunteering/awards/rau.