ECE Seminar: Life as a Researcher within a Tech Company

Life as a Researcher within a Tech Company

Matt Fojtik, Principal Research Scientist, NVIDIA

Thursday, October 3 at 3:00pm

Location: 17 HLH, TEAL classroom (Room 101)

Hosted by: Rajit Manohar

Abstract:

NVIDIA Research is a team of around 200 people in a company of around 30,000.  Although groundbreaking R&D is done throughout the company, the goal of the Research organization is to tackle problems beyond the immediate horizon and de-risk technologies that may become relevant in 5-10 years.  In this talk, I will discuss what it’s like working for a research team within a tech company, and how that differs from product teams and academic research labs.

I will give an overview of the scope of work we do, the kinds of priorities we have, our goals and research methodologies, and how we judge successful projects.  Rather than do a deep dive on a single technical work, I will share examples of the previous projects we’ve done, as well as how the field has changed in the past 10-15 years.  I will also include advice I wish I could give to myself as a 1st year grad student.

Bio:

Matt Fojtik is a Principal Research Scientist in NVIDIA’s Accelerators & VLSI Research Group.  His research interests include efficient VLSI methodologies, timing margin reduction techniques, clocking and synchronization, power supply noise tolerance, and low power on-chip communication.

He earned his Bachelors, Masters, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2008, 2010, and 2013 respectively.  In 2013, he joined NVIDIA in Durham, North Carolina as a member of the Circuits Research Group and later became one of the founding members of the Accelerators & VLSI Research Group.