University of Oxford appoints Cadence employee as visiting professor
Cadence Design Systems and the University of Oxford has announced a move to foster the advancement of formal verification innovation with the appointment of Dr. Ziyad Hanna, Vice President of R&D, Cadence, as a visiting professor in Oxford’s Department of Computer Science for the next three years.
Through Dr. Hanna’s appointment at Oxford, a globally distinguished university, Cadence further expands its Cadence Academic Network footprint. Dr. Hanna brings more than 25 years of industry experience to Oxford. He currently leads the R&D team for the Cadence Jasper Gold formal verification platform, having joined from Jasper Design Automation, which was acquired by Cadence in 2014.
Before joining Jasper, Dr. Hanna was also a senior principal engineer and a group leader at Intel, working on formal property verification and equivalence checking. A senior IEEE member, he has mentored dozens of research projects, delivered many visionary talks for the industry and academia and served in more than 50 programme committees to advance academic research.
Dr. Hanna has co-authored over 30 articles and holds 15 U.S. patents, and he earned both his B.Sc. and M.S. degrees in mathematics and computer science at Tel Aviv University and his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. Oxford’s Automated Verification Group, based in the Department of Computer Science, is one of the largest and strongest academic research groups in the field worldwide, and Cadence has one of the largest corporate investments in formal verification and formal equivalence research and development.
Through this appointment, Dr. Hanna is using his real-world experience to enhance Oxford’s automated formal verification research program, while also gaining exposure to the university’s practical and industrially oriented research, which is what the Cadence Academic Network works to foster.
“The University of Oxford appoints visiting professorships to highly distinguished individuals who are regarded as world leaders in their field and can further enhance our research excellence,” said Thomas Melham, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. “The appointment of Dr. Hanna to Oxford highlights the commitment of Cadence to further the research and development of innovative technology, including formal verification. His visiting professorship provides Cadence with early insight into new academic research directions for addressing the hardest verification challenges that many chip design and system companies encounter.”
“Oxford’s work in verification spans a wide range of research, from fundamental investigations into model checking to practical, machine-assisted methods applicable to real-world design and verification problems in software and hardware systems,” said Dr. Hanna. “It’s an honor to be working with Oxford’s renowned Department of Computer Science. This appointment enables me to collaborate closely with Oxford’s leading verification researchers to tap into the university’s research, which can drive formal verification innovation and bring talented Oxford graduates to Cadence.”