HKUST’s Prof. Tim Cheng Receives Prestigious ACM SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award
Recognized for His Outstanding Contributions that Reshaped Global Semiconductor Design and Testing
Prof. Tim Kwang Ting CHENG, Vice-President for Research and Development and Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Director of the AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has recently been awarded the esteemed Pioneering Achievement Award 2025 from the Special Interest Group on Design Automation of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGDA), the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. Prof. Cheng is only the second scholar from Asia to receive this accolade since its inception.
The Award is one of the most prestigious recognitions in the electronic design automation (EDA) community. It is presented annually to honor individuals whose lifelong contributions have fundamentally shaped the field of EDA and influenced the industry’s approach to designing, verifying, and manufacturing complex electronic systems, as demonstrated by pioneering ideas in publications, industrial products, or other relevant contributions. The award committee commended Prof. Cheng for his outstanding and enduring contributions to electronic design automation, testing, verification, and AI chip design, as well as for his lifetime of leadership and innovation that continues to advance our global community.
Prof. Cheng expressed his heartfelt gratitude for the award, stating, “Many groundbreaking research results find surprising uses that were not initially intended, which is why pursuing cross-disciplinary research is so rewarding. Now, after many cycles of growth and challenges in the semiconductor industry, we find ourselves in another golden era of semiconductors, which is truly remarkable. We must act as advocates for globalization, fostering pre-competitive collaboration and nurturing talent together to ensure the continued growth of the semiconductor industry and EDA in this new golden era.”
An internationally renowned researcher in the field of electronics testing and design verification, Prof. Cheng has forged connections across disciplines, from AI chip design to computer vision and medical image analysis. His pioneering research introduced partial scan design, a breakthrough in design-for-testability that has become an industry standard and a foundational topic in textbooks. He also developed ATPG-based logic equivalence checking, making significant contributions to delay testing, high-speed I/O validation, and test data analytics — all of which are now essential components of modern semiconductor design and manufacturing.
Prof. Cheng's research accomplishments have been widely recognized internationally for years. He has published more than 500 papers, co-authored five books, held more than 20 patents, and successfully commercialized several of his inventions. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. His works have had a significant impact, earning him 12 best paper awards and a Distinguished Paper Citation at major conferences and journals, as well as a Pan Wen Yuan Foundation Award for Outstanding Research, and the Overseas Outstanding Contribution Award from the China Computer Federation. He was also recognized at the 50th Design Automation Conference in 2013 as a Top 10 Author in DAC’s Fourth Decade and as a Prolific Author. In Stanford University’s 2025 Top 2% Scientists list, Prof. Cheng ranked 10th and 9th for his single-year and career-long impact, respectively, in the subfields of “Computer Hardware and Architecture” and “Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing”.
This recognition of Prof. Cheng's work not only highlights his outstanding achievements in research but also underscores HKUST's ongoing efforts to promote research and innovation excellence and its commitment to developing interdisciplinary research. It further solidifies HKUST's position as a world-leading university and significantly contributes to establishing Hong Kong as an international innovation and technology hub.
For more information about the Award, please visit: https://www.sigda.org/awards/pioneer/.
About The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (https://hkust.edu.hk/) is a world-class university known for its innovative education, research excellence, and impactful knowledge transfer. With a holistic and interdisciplinary pedagogy approach, HKUST was ranked 6th in the QS Asia University Rankings 2026, 3rd in the Times Higher Education’s Young University Rankings 2024, and 19th globally and 1st in Hong Kong in the Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings 2025. Thirteen HKUST subjects were ranked among the world’s top 50 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025, with “Data Science and Artificial Intelligence” coming in 17th worldwide and first in Hong Kong. Our graduates are highly competitive, consistently ranking among the world’s top 30 most sought-after employees. In terms of research and entrepreneurship, over 80% of our work was rated “internationally excellent” or “world leading” in the Research Assessment Exercise 2020 of the Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee. As of July 2025, HKUST members have founded over 1,900 active start-ups, including 10 Unicorns and 17 exits (IPO or M&A).
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