Young People Program at DATE 2021

Are you a young person? Are you doing a PhD? Then you should know that Cadence is sponsoring the Young People Program (YPP) at DATE 2021. Not surprisingly, this is being driven by the European part of the Cadence Academic Network.

Anton Klotz, who runs the academic network in Europe, is co-chair of the YPP. Here is a video of him describing the YPP (3 minutes):

DATE takes place from February 1 to 5, and there is lots going on besides the YPP, of course. You can find out full details on the DATE website (link at the end of this post) or by looking at my preview post DATE 2021: A Virtual Event in the First Week of February.

Here is DATE's own description of the conference:

The five-day event consists of a conference with plenary invited papers, regular papers, panels, hot-topic sessions, tutorials, workshops, special focus days and a track for executives. The scientific conference is complemented by a commercial exhibition showing the state-of-the-art in design and test tools, methodologies, IP and design services, reconfigurable and other hardware platforms, embedded software and (industrial) design experiences from different application domains, such as automotive, wireless, telecom and multimedia applications. The organisation of user group meetings, fringe meetings, a university booth, a PhD forum, vendor presentations, a Young People Program, and social events offers a wide variety of extra opportunities to meet and exchange information on relevant issues for the design automation, design and test communities. Special space will also be allocated for EU-funded projects to show their results.

There are several events that make up the YPP. The goal of the program is to raise the visibility of PhD students and their work, and give advice and contacts to smooth taking the next step after graduation, whether that be to remain in academia or to take a position in industry (we're hiring!).

Career Fair

The Career Fair aims at bringing together PhD students and potential job seekers with recruiters from EDA and microelectronic companies. Interested job seekers have the opportunity to present themselves to the best workplaces in the industry, and to have a video interview with interested companies. If you register for the career fair, you can also attend a "Meet the Recruiter Call" on January 19 where you can ask questions to the recruiters of a big company on how to optimize your CV (resume) and how to present yourself to recruiters. After that, you can submit your CV, a video, and a list of companies in which you are interested. All the data will be forwarded to the recruiters of those companies and you will be invited to an interview during the conference. You can also take a SWOT test to evaluate your strengths and appropriate opportunities.

To participate in the career fair, you must register by January 15 (this week!) at the link at the end of this post.

Career Forum

The Career Forum, not to be confused with the Career Fair, has three events associated with it.

• A keynote by Luca Benini of ETH Zurich, famous most recently for the PULP and PULPino RISC-V cores
• A panel session on the different career opportunities in microelectronics, with the panel consisting of Ioana Vetajelu (University Grenoble-Alpes), Paul McLellan (that would be me), David Moloney (Ubotica Technologies), Andreas Kells (Arm), and John Davis (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
• Which Career Path to Take? A SWOT analysis, led by Laleh Behjat (University of Calgary)

There is no special registration required for the Career Forum, it is part of the DATE agenda.

BarCamp at DATE

The BarCamp is an interactive open research meeting. Participants present, discuss, and jointly develop ideas and results of the ongoing scientific work in a more interactive way. Characterized by an informal atmosphere, the goal of the BarCamp is to generate new and out-of-the-box ideas, and allow networking and interaction between participants.

Letting the participants interactively decide about the agenda, BarCamps are massively relaxing the formal event structures. With nothing but your knowledge, your interest, and your willingness to learn and to discuss, you are sufficiently prepared to join any session. Having your own topic, you only need to give a two or three minutes "session pitch" (some very introductive words about your topic) to propose your topic as a session on its own. During the sessions, we interactively explain, discuss, and jointly develop the topics from that point of knowledge, where everybody is. Meeting and discussing on a par with each other everyone's individual interests and work can and will benefit from the others.

To give you more of an idea about what a BarCamp is, here are the rules:

1. Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.
2. Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.
3. Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
4. Rule: Only three-word intros.
5. Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
6. Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
7. Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
8. Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don't really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)

BarCamp at DATE takes place on Monday, February 1 and runs all day from 9:30am to 10:00pm. It is a great opportunity for networking. However, since DATE is virtual, this is also somewhat of an experiment as to how the BarCamp concept translates into a virtual environment. If you plan to attend, you should also watch this video.

If you want to attend, then during DATE registration, select BarCamp attendance (it's free). If you want to participate at BarCamp only, contact the YPP for manual registration. The registration fee, in this case, is €30.

PhD Forum

You are too late to submit a poster for the 2021 PhD forum, but you can visit and see the posters and ask questions of this year's participants. Also, think about submitting next year. You should either have recently graduated (last year) or be approaching graduation. The PhD Forum takes place on Monday, February 1, following the tutorials.

Tutorials

Of potential interest to all students are the tutorials, which take place on Monday, February 1. The tutorials run in two blocks, with three tutorials running parallel. But you can go in and out of different tutorials. The topics of this year's tutorials are:

Morning:

• Industrial control systems security
• Software-defined hardware: digital design in the 21st century with Chisel
• How emerging memory technology will reshape future computing

Late afternoon:

• Security in the post-quantum era: threats and countermeasures
• Automation  goes both ways: ML for security and security for ML
• CAD for SoC security

Learn More and Register

• The Young People Program page on the DATE website.
• The registration page for the career fair (by January 15). This also asks for your CV and a 5-minute video.
• The BarCamp at DATE page (tick the BarCamp box when you register for DATE, but you should also send a one-line description of a topic you would like to present).
• The Tutorial page.
• The main page and registration page for DATE 2021.

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