Mahdi Nikdast

Mahdi Nikdast serves as Associate Professor and Endowed Rockwell-Anderson Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU), Fort Collins, directing the Electronic-PhotoniC System Design (ECSyD) Laboratory and acting as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems (TVLSI).

His educational qualifications include a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Azad University, Iran (2009) and a Ph.D. in Electronic and Computer Engineering from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (2014), followed by postdoctoral research at McGill University and Polytechnique Montreal (2014-2017).

Research focuses on integrated photonics and high-performance computing intersections, with specific expertise in Silicon Photonics, Photonics for AI, Interconnection Networks, and Design Automation. His work spans VLSI, EDA, Embedded Systems, SoCs, and Computer Architecture, addressing critical challenges in photonic-electronic system design for next-generation computing.

Major recognitions include:

• NSF CAREER Award (2021)
• George T. Abell Awards for Early-Career Faculty (2022) and Teaching/Mentoring (2023)
• Rockwell-Anderson Professorship (2022)
• Multiple Best Paper Awards at DATE, ACP, and GLSVLSI conferences

As a mentor, he guides students in award-winning research published in top venues. He co-founded the OPTICS and SPHPC workshops, edited two books on photonic computing, and serves on TPCs for DAC, OFC, and DATE. His ECSyD Laboratory pioneers electronic-photonic integration for AI acceleration and high-performance systems.