Professor Jason Cong, Volgenau Chair for Engineering Excellence at UCLA, delivered a keynote address at the 31st ACM KDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2025) in Toronto, Canada.
Cong’s talk, “Deep Learning Meets Chip Design: Driving Next-Gen Efficiency and Innovation,” showcased advances in the co-design of AI models and hardware accelerators aimed at realizing efficient general intelligence (EGI). He also shared UCLA’s latest breakthroughs in applying AI and machine learning to automate chip design, which opens new frontiers for innovation in computing systems.
As the premier conference in data science, KDD features both a Research Track and an Applied Data Science Track. The 2025 edition drew more than 2,300 researchers and practitioners from around the world.
Cong received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UIUC in 1990. He directs the Center for Domain-Specific Computing and the VAST Laboratory at UCLA. A leading researcher in VLSI as well as quantum computing, he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and NAI. He has received top honors including the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal and the ACM Charles P. Thacker Breakthrough Award, and co-founded successful startups such as AutoESL (acquired by Xilinx) and Falcon Computing (acquired by AMD).
To see a recording of Professor Cong’s keynote, visit this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZMlKOICg6c