From Logic to Atoms: Design Automation for Atomic-Scale Computing
Invited Talk at Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
Curriculum Vitae
Education
- Habilitation Candidate, Technical University of Munich, 2027 (expected graduation)
- Thesis: Advanced Design Automation and Simulation for Atomic-Scale Computing
- Ph.D. in Computer Science (summa cum laude), University of Bremen, 2021
- Thesis: Design Automation for Field-coupled Nanotechnologies
- M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Bremen, 2016
- Specialization in Safety, Security, and Quality
- Thesis: Exact Synthesis of Abstraction-Level-Independent Logic Networks
- B.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Bremen, 2015
- Thesis: Optimization of Quantum Circuits for Linear Nearest Neighbor Architectures
Work Experience
- Since 2025: Senior Quantum Software Engineer at the Munich Quantum Software Company (MQSC)
- Industrial-strength software for quantum computers
- HPCQC integration
- Since 2021: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Technical University of Munich (TUM)
- Design Automation for post-CMOS Emerging Nanotechnologies
- Logic Synthesis & Physical Design
- Silicon Photonics
- Superconducting Quantum Computing
- Advising theses of all levels
- Teaching undergraduate and graduate courses (cf. teaching experience)
- Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Robert Wille, Chair for Design Automation
- 2024: Substitute Professor at the University of Bremen
- Teaching graduate courses (cf. teaching experience)
- 2016–2021: Researcher and Ph.D. student at University of Bremen
- Physical design of post-CMOS Emerging Nanotechnologies
- Verification of CRAM plans for PR2 robots at the collaborative research center EASE
- Teaching undergraduate courses (cf. teaching experience) and supervising Bachelor’s and Master’s theses
- Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rolf Drechsler, Research Group of Computer Architecture
- 2015–2016: Independent Study at University of Bremen
- Reactive system synthesis from LTL specifications using Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT)
- Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Ehlers, Modelling of Technical Systems Research Group
- 2015–2016: Research Assistant at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
- Formal verification of access control systems
- Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christoph Lüth, Cyber Physical Systems
- 2013–2015: Student Tutor / Teaching Assistant at University of Bremen
- Practical Computer Science 1
- Java basics, object-oriented programming, algorithms and data structures
- Supervisor: Dr. Karsten Hölscher, Software Engineering Group
- Technical Computer Science 1
- Computer architecture and embedded systems, Boolean Algebra, logic synthesis
- Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rolf Drechsler, Research Group of Computer Architecture
- Practical Computer Science 1
Research Interests
- Design Automation for Post-CMOS Nanotechnologies: Field-coupled Nanocomputing (Quantum-dot Cellular Automata, Silicon Dangling Bonds) — logic synthesis, physical design, placement & routing, verification, and physical simulation
- Quantum Computing: software and hardware integration for quantum computers, including cryogenic CMOS control electronics and HPC-quantum computing (HPCQC) integration
- Emerging Substrates: silicon photonics and superconducting quantum circuit design, extending the same design-automation methodology to new physical substrates
- Algorithmic Foundations: exact and heuristic combinatorial optimization, SAT/SMT-based synthesis and verification, graph algorithms, and computational complexity theory
Languages
- German (Native)
- English (Fluent)
- Dutch (B2)
Honors and Awards
IEEE NANO 2025 Best Student Paper Award: “Building a Machine Learning Accelerator with Silicon Dangling Bonds: From Verilog to Quantum Dot Layout” (cf. conference website’s excerpt and the respective paper)
LASCAS 2025 Best Paper Award Candidate: “Physical Design for Field-coupled Nanocomputing with Discretionary Cost Objectives” (cf. the conference program’s excerpt and the respective paper)
Berninghausenpreis 2024 Award Candidate (in the category “Studierendenpreis”) for the lecture “Logic Synthesis & Physical Design”
IEEE NANO 2024 Best Presentation Award: “Technology Mapping for Beyond-CMOS Circuitry with Unconventional Cost Functions” (cf. the award certificate and the respective paper)
IWLS 2023 Best Paper Award Candidate: “Technology Mapping for Beyond-CMOS Circuitry with Unconventional Cost Functions” (cf. the conference website’s excerpt and the respective paper (later published at IEEE NANO 2024))
ASP-DAC 2021 Best Paper Award Candidate: “One-pass Synthesis for Field-coupled Nanocomputing Technologies” (cf. the conference website’s excerpt and the respective paper)
DAC 2020 Best Young Student Fellow Research Video Award: “Time Multiplexing Via Circuit Folding” (cf. the issued reward and the respective video)
DAC 2020 Young Student Fellow Program Scholarship (cf. the respective certificate of appreciation)
ISVLSI 2020 Best Student Forum Paper Award: “Design Automation for Field-coupeld Nanotechnologies” (cf. the award certificate, the respective paper, and a press release in German)
ISVLSI 2020 Best Paper Award Candidate: “Bail on Balancing: An Alternative Approach to the Physical Design of Field-coupled Nanocomputing Circuits” (cf. the respective paper)
ISVLSI 2019 Best Research Demo Award: “fiction: Electronic Design Automation for Field-coupled Nanocomputing Circuits” (cf. the award certificate and a DFKI press release in German)
Invited Talks
aigverse: Toward Machine Learning-Driven Logic Synthesis
Invited Talk at Free Silicon Conference, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
Chip Design for AI
Workshop with Hands-on at 4th Annual Hack4Her Event, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Munich Nanotech Toolkit (MNT)
Invited Workshop Contribution at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - Workshop on Nanocomputing, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Field-coupled Nanocomputing (FCN)
Special Session Host and Organizer at IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE NANO) 2024, Gijón, Spain
Logic Synthesis for AI
Workshop with Hands-on at 3rd Annual Hack4Her Event, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Case for Planar Logic Synthesis - Crossing Costs in Nanotech
Invited Special Session at International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2024, Zurich, Switzerland
The Munich Nanotech Toolkit (MNT)
Guest Researcher Lecture at Department of Physics - Condensed Matter, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Design Automation for Field-coupled Nanotechnologies
Thesis overview at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne - Laboratoire des Systèmes Intégrés, Lausanne, Switzerland
Field-coupled Nanocomputing (FCN)
Lecture at Johannes Kepler University Linz - Emerging Computer Technologies, Linz, Austria
Teaching Experience
Supervision and Mentoring
Ph.D. Candidates
- Dr. Jan Drewniok (Technical University of Munich, 2026, summa cum laude)
- Thesis: Design and Simulation of Atomic-Scale Computing: A Comprehensive Framework for Physical Simulation, Logic Design, Logic Analysis, and Circuit Design
- Honors and Awards:
- IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC) 2026 Best PhD Thesis Award
- DATE 2025 Best Poster Award at the PhD Forum
- IEEE NANO 2024 Student Design Competition Winner: “NanoLogic: An Educational App for Atomic-Scale Computing”
- Dr. Simon Hofmann (Technical University of Munich, 2026, summa cum laude)
- Thesis: Physical Design for Field-coupled Nanocomputing
- Honors and Awards:
- LASCAS 2025 Best Paper Award Candidate: “Physical Design for Field-coupled Nanocomputing with Discretionary Cost Objectives”
Bachelor’s and Master’s Theses (selection)
- Michael Feldmeier (M.Sc., Technical University of Munich, 2025): Exploring Feedback-Guided AIG Optimization to Align Logic Synthesis with Mapping Objectives
- Danilo Quinci (M.Sc., Politecnico di Torino, 2025): Design of standard cell libraries for molecular field-coupled nanocomputing design automation
- Felix Kiefhaber (B.Sc., Technical University of Munich, 2025): Super-Tile Routing for Omnidirectional Information Flow in Silicon Dangling Bond Logic
- Willem Lambooy (M.Sc., Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 2024): Hierarchically Bounded Composable Interactions: Applications and Extensions to Atom-Scale Logic Design
- Benjamin Hien (M.Sc., Technical University of Munich, 2023): Signal Distribution Networks in Automatic QCA Standard-Cell Placement & Routing
- Isabella Venancia Gardner (B.Sc., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2023): Machine Learning for Electrostatic Ground State Simulation of Silicon Dangling Bond Logic: Exploring the Impact of Custom Physical Feature Encodings in Transformer-based Models
- Sophia Kuhn (B.Sc., University of Bremen, 2021): Design Understanding für Quantum-dot Cellular Automata Layouts
- Daniel Staack (B.Sc., University of Bremen, 2021): Fehlerfindung in robotischen Plänen mittels Fuzzing
- Till Schlechtweg (B.Sc., University of Bremen, 2020): Gate-level Placement für Field-coupled Nanocomputing unter Berücksichtigung von Clocking Constraints
Open-Source Repositories (selection)
- Since 2018: Initiator and core maintainer of the Munich Nanotech Toolkit (MNT), an ecosystem of open-source tools for design automation of post-CMOS nanotechnologies (cf. the tool paper), contributing across its components as needed
- Flagship project: the fiction framework for Design Automation of Field-coupled Nanotechnologies (cf. the tool paper)
- Open-source project for researchers and developers
- Featured in several third-party publications (cf. the citing papers)
- Honored with a Best Research Demo Award (see above)
- Since 2024: Initiator and maintainer of the aigverse library
- A Python library for working with logic networks, synthesis, and optimization
- High-performance C++ backend
- Interoperability with other logic synthesis tools
- Convenient integration with popular data science and machine learning libraries
- Since 2025: Contributor to the Munich Quantum Toolkit (MQT), contributing across its repositories as part of ongoing quantum software engineering work at MQSC
- Exemplary repository: MQT Core, the toolkit’s foundational C++/Python library providing the shared data structures and algorithms (compilation, simulation, verification) that its other quantum-software components build on (cf. the tool paper)
- Since 2020: Contributor to the EPFL Logic Synthesis Libraries, a collection of C++ libraries for logic network synthesis, optimization, and verification
- Exemplary repository: mockturtle, a header-only library for logic network manipulation and optimization
- Since 2025: Contributor and co-maintainer of QDMI-on-IQM
- Implementation of the Quantum Device Management Interface (QDMI) for IQM’s quantum computing hardware, the standard interface connecting HPC software stacks to quantum backends
- Enables the HPCQC integration case study demonstrated on real IQM hardware (cf. the paper)
- Co-maintain the repository: reviewing contributions and keeping the integration current with both QDMI and IQM’s hardware interfaces
Professional Service
- Reviewer for international conferences and journals (verified on my publons profile where applicable) including
- IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD)
- Design Automation Conference (DAC)
- International Conference On Computer Aided Design (ICCAD)
- Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE)
- ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES)
- ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing (JETC)
- IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC)
- IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology (TNANO)
- IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems (TCAS)
- IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems (TVLSI)
- IEEE Design & Test (D&T)
- IEEE Embedded Systems Letters (ESL)
- Journal of Computational Electronics (JCEL)
- International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS)
- ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI)
- Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD)
- European Test Symposium (ETS)
- International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID)
- Integration - The VLSI Journal
- Microprocessors and Microsystems: Embedded Hardware Design (MICPRO)
- Journal on Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (ALOG)
- IEEE International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic (ISMVL)
- IEEE International Symposium on Embedded Computing and System Design (ISED)
- IEEE CASS Latin American Symposium on Circuits and Systems (LASCAS)
- The European Physical Journal Plus (EPJ Plus)
- Mathematics
- Executive team for international conferences
- Member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for the IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE NANO) 2027
- Program Co-Chair and member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for the International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2027
- Judge for the Best Poster Award at the IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE NANO) 2026
- Publicity Co-Chair and member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) for the International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2026
- Chair for the Logic Synthesis for Specialized Targets session at the International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2026
- Track Co-Chair for the Technology (Devices, Nano-electronic), Design Automation, Test, Fault Tolerance, and Reliability track at the IEEE CASS Latin American Symposium on Circuits and Systems (LASCAS) 2025
- Host and organizer of the special session on Field-coupled Nanocomputing (FCN) at the IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE NANO) 2024
- Proceedings Chair in the Organizing Committee and jury member for the Best Student Paper Award at the International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2024
- Chair for the Machine Learning for Synthesis session at the International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2024
- Technical Program Committee Member of the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) 2023 (cf. the certificate of appreciation)
- Chair for the Verification session at the International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis (IWLS) 2023
- Technical Operator at the International Conference On Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) 2020
- Staff member at the European Test Symposium (ETS) 2018
- Community services
- Host of an expert/mentor session at the 3rd Annual Hack4Her Event 2024 in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Host of an expert/mentor session at the Hack4Her Technology Retreat 2023 in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Jury member at the Hack4Her Hackathon 2022 in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Student mentor at the Gymnasium Syke, Germany, since 2013
Challenges, Tutorials, and Contests
- 2026: ISPD Contest (Participant and Mentor)
- Post-Placement Buffering and Sizing
- 2024: IWLS Programming Contests (Participant and Mentor)
- Optimal synthesis of AIGs and XAIGs from truth table specifications
- 2020: High Level Synthesis Tutorial by Cadence @ DAC 2020
- Logic synthesis of a Convolutional Neural Network that serves as an AI Accelerator for Image Recognition (cf. the issued badge)
- 2016: Bremen Big Data Challenge
- Applied machine learning on League of Legends statistics to predict winning teams