Zhenman Fang

Dr. Zhenman Fang is an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University (SFU), where he founded and directs the HiAccel Lab. He also holds an associate membership in the School of Computing Science at SFU. His research focuses on customizable computing with software-defined hardware acceleration, addressing performance, energy-efficiency, and reliability in post-Moore’s law computing across domains like machine learning, big data analytics, quantum chemistry, and precision medicine.

• Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science from Fudan University (2014), with a visit to University of Minnesota during his studies.
• Postdoctoral Work: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (2014-2017).
• Industry Experience: Staff Software Engineer at Xilinx (2017-2019).

Dr. Fang’s research spans the entire computing stack, including application characterization, accelerator-rich architecture design, and programming/tool support. He has developed frameworks like HiSpMV, SyncNN, and SQL2FPGA, emphasizing FPGA acceleration for vision transformers, quantum chemistry, and spiking neural networks. His work has been recognized with 3 best paper awards (FPL 2024, TCAD 2019, MEMSYS 2017) and 3 best paper nominees (FCCM 2025, HPCA 2017, ISPASS 2018).

Recent publications highlight trends in low-precision machine learning (ShiftQuant, ESRU), quantum chemistry acceleration (SERI), and vision transformer optimization (Quasar-ViT). His HiAccel Lab actively mentors PhD and MASc students, with notable graduates like Alec Lu (PhD 2024, now at Meta) and Philip Stachura (MASc, now with BC Graduate Scholarship).

• Scientific Awards:
  • Inaugural SFU Research Excellence Award - Horizon Award (2025)
  • FPL 2024 Stamatis Vassiliadis Best Paper
  • NSERC Alliance Award (2020)
  • CFI JELF Award (2019)
  • Xilinx University Program Award (2019)
  • IEEE Senior Member (2023)
• Grants:
  • NSERC Discovery Grant (2019)
  • CFI JELF Funding (2019)
  • Huawei and Xilinx sponsorships

Dr. Fang leads open-source initiatives like SyncNN, PASTA, and SQL2FPGA, and serves as General Chair for ASAP 2025 and Program Co-Chair for RAW 2025. His lab collaborates globally with institutions such as UCLA, Northeastern University, and Xidian University.