Sharad Malik is an Indian-American computer scientist who works in formal methods, electronic design automation, and computer architecture. He is now the George Van Ness Lothrop Professor of Engineering in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Princeton University.
Early life and education
Malik earned a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi in 1985. He later received a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the same field in 1990. During his doctoral studies, his advisor was Robert K. Brayton.
Contributions
Malik is well-known for his work on creating faster tools to solve complex logic problems. He and his students developed the Chaff solver, which improved methods for solving these problems by learning from mistakes. He also started a new approach called Instruction Level Abstraction, which helps in checking the accuracy of computer hardware.
Awards
- ACM Fellow, 2014
- IEEE Fellow, 2002
- CAV Award, Computer Aided Verification conference, "for important work in creating fast Boolean satisfiability solvers," 2009
- IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, Ten Year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award, 2011
- IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference 50th Anniversary Most Cited Paper Award, 2013
- Princeton University President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2009
- IEEE CEDA A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award in Electronic Design Automation, 2017
Service
Malik has worked on the editorial boards of journals such as IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, Formal Methods in System Design, and Journal of VLSI Signal Processing. He was the head of Princeton University's ECE department from 2012 to 2021.