Xiaoqing Xu, Texas ECE PHD candidate, has received the Gold Medal at the ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition (SRC) in the Graduate category. The SRC is sponsored by Microsoft and offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research before a panel of judges and other students. The ceremony was held at the 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD). As the first place winner of SRC, Xu will advance to the ACM-wide SRC Grand Finals, where he will compete with first place winners from other ACM SIGs. Xu has been recognized for his research entitled "Toward Unidirectional Routing Closure in Advanced Technology Nodes”. 

Xu is a fifth year PHD candidate at Texas ECE. He received his B.S. in Microelectronics from Peking University in 2012. He was awarded the SPIE BACUS Scholarship in 2016, the University Graduate Continuing Fellowship in 2016, The Best in Session Award by SRC TECHCON in 2015, A. Richard Newton Young Student Fellow Award by DAC in 2013, and the MCD Fellowship at Texas ECE. His research interests include design for manufacturability and physical design.

Xiaoqing is supervised by Prof. David Z. Pan.