Texas ECE graduate student Xiaoqing Xu has received the Best in Session Award at the 2015 SRC TECHCON Conference held in Austin, Texas on September 21-22. Xiaoqing's paper entitled "PARR: Pin Access Planning and Regular Routing for Self-Aligned Double Patterning" proposes novel routing strategies to improve the pin accessibility of nanometer IC design in sub-14/10nm technology nodes.

Xiaoqing Xu is a PhD student advised by Prof. David Z. Pan. The work has been funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).

According to SRC, TECHCON "provides a cross-disciplinary snapshot of the state-of-the-art in silicon-based research. The technical papers selected represent a summary of the best research in SRC’s portfolio across all SRC's research programs. Papers are divided into sessions organized around technical areas of particular interest to SRC membership. Presenters also make a poster presentation during a TechFair session that allows for one on one discussions."