The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) announced the recipients of the 2025 University Research Awards on Thursday.
Huili Grace Xing, the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University with a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Todd Austin, the S. Jack Hu Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Science at the University of Michigan, will receive the awards.
The SIA and SRC present the University Research Awards annually to professors for research in semiconductor technology and design. The awards ceremony is scheduled for the SIA Awards Dinner on Nov. 20, 2025, in San Jose, California.
Dr. Xing will receive the 2025 SIA/SRC University Research Award for Technology. Her research focuses on III-V nitride materials and devices, oxide materials and devices, 2D semiconductors, and layered crystals. Her work includes wide-bandgap semiconductors such as AlN/GaN ultrascaled high electron/hole mobility transistors for high-speed, high-power applications in high-frequency wireless communication, solid-state electronics, and energy-efficient devices. Her contributions include fundamental research on material properties at the atomic level and applied research involving the design and testing of GaN devices. She is a Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, and APS, and has received the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, ISCS Young Scientist Award, NSF CAREER Award, and AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award.
Dr. Austin will receive the 2025 SIA/SRC University Research Award for Design. His work covers computer microarchitecture, robust and secure system design, hardware and software verification, and performance analysis tools and techniques. He developed SimpleScalar, a suite of tools for simulating, testing, and debugging computer designs. His contributions include runtime verification with the DIVA fault-tolerant pipeline and the Razor technique. His recent work focuses on processor security through the Morpheus project, which uses dynamic encryption and randomized data/code shuffling to counter cyberattacks, and his work at Agita Labs on privacy-enhanced computing architectures. He has received the Richard Newton Gigascale Systems Research Center Industrial Impact Award, U-M Henry Russel Award, NSF CAREER Award, ACM Maurice Wilkes Award, IEEE/ACM MICRO Test of Time Award, and is a Sloan Fellow and IEEE Fellow.
John Neuffer, president and CEO of SIA, stated that advancements in semiconductor technology support America’s economic strength, national security, and global leadership.
The U.S. semiconductor industry allocated approximately 18% of revenue to research and development in 2024.
Dr. Todd Younkin, President and CEO of SRC, stated that SRC research programs deliver impact through collaboration across academia, industry, and government. Both recipients have contributed to initiatives funded by industry and SRC’s partnership with DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO).
