Yanzhi Wang
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Contact
- yanz.wang@northeastern.edu
- 329 Dana
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Office
- 617.373.8805
Related Links
Research Focus
Real-time and energy-efficient deep learning and artificial intelligence systems, model compression of deep neural networks (DNNs), neuromorphic computing and non-von Neumann computing paradigms
Education
- PhD, University of Southern California, 2014
Honors & Awards
- 2022 College of Engineering Faculty Fellow
- IEEE Technical Committee on Secure and Dependable Measurement Early Career Award
- Army Research Office Young Investigator Award
- Top Paper Award, IEEE Cloud Computing Conference (CLOUD)
- System Design Contest Special Service Recognition Award at DAC
- Massachusetts Acorn Innovation Award, Faculty Research Awards from Google, Mathworks, etc.
- Best Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
- Best Paper Award, IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronic Design (ISLPED)
Research Overview
Real-time and energy-efficient deep learning and artificial intelligence systems, model compression of deep neural networks (DNNs), neuromorphic computing and non-von Neumann computing paradigms
Selected Research Projects
- DISCoVER (Design & Integration of Superconductive Computation for Ventures beyond Exascale Realization)
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Toxic-Free Footprints to Improve Community Health against Respiratory Hazards
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- CNS Core: Small: Collaborative: Content-based Viewport Prediction Framework for Live Virtual Reality Streaming
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- PatDNN: Towards 100X Acceleration and Real-Time DNN Execution on Mobile Platforms
- – Principal Investigator (YIP), Army Research Office
- SPX: Collaborative Research: FASTLEAP: FPGA based Compact Deep Learning Platform
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
Research Centers and Institutes
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- Yue, Jinshan, Liu, Yongpan, Liu, Ruoyang, Sun, Wenyu, Yuan, Zhe, Tu, Yung-Ning, Chen, Yi-Ju, Ren, Ao, Wang, Yanzhi, Chang, Meng-Fan, Li, Xueqing, Yang, Huazhong (2021). STICKER-T: An Energy-Efficient Neural Network Processor Using Block-Circulant Algorithm and Unified Frequency-Domain Acceleration. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 56(6),1936-1948. 10.1109/JSSC.2020.3030264
- Niu, X. Ma, S. Lin, S. Wang, X. Qian, X. Lin, Y. Wang, B. Ren, PatDNN: Achieving Real-Time Dnn Execution on Mobile Devices with Pattern-Based Weight Pruning, in ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), 2020
- Ma, F-M. Guo, W. Niu, X. Lin, J. Tang, K. Ma, B. Ren, Wang, PCONV: The Missing but Desirable Sparsity in Dnn Weight Pruning for Real-Time Execution on Mobile Device, AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2020
- R. Cai, A. Ren, O. Chen, N. Liu, C. Ding, X. Qian, J. Han, W. Luo, N. Yoshikawa, Y. Wang, A Stochastic-Computing Based Deep Learning Framework Using Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron Superconducting Technology, in Proceedings of International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), 2019

Apr 22, 2022
ECE’s Wang and Collaborators Awarded $15M by NSF for Developing Superconducting Technology for Faster, More Efficient Computing
Yanzhi Wang, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering (ECE), is part of a multi-university team that was awarded a $15 million, six-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing program. With collaborators from the University of Southern California, Cornell University, Auburn University, and the University of Rochester, Wang is exploring the use of novel superconductor electronics as a viable next step in computing technology.
Apr 15, 2022
Faculty and Staff Awards 2022
Congratulations to all the winners of the faculty and staff awards, and to everyone for their hard work and dedication during the 2021-2022 academic school year.
Dec 23, 2021
COE Professors Selected in Stanford University List of Top 2% Scientists Worldwide
The following COE professors are among the top scientists worldwide selected by Stanford University representing the top 2 percent of the most-cited scientists with single-year impact in various disciplines. The selection is based on the top 100,000 by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above. The list below includes […]

Sep 02, 2021
$1.5M NSF Award for Real-Time Mobile Air Quality Monitoring and Intervention
CEE Assistant Professor Qi Ryan Wang is leading a $1.5M NSF grant, in collaboration with ECE Assistant Professor Yanzhi Wang, CEE/MES Assistant Professor Amy Mueller, CAMD Associate Professor Brooke Foucault Welles, and Adrienne Katner from the LA State University Health Science Center, to work on “Toxic-Free Footprints to Improve Community Health against Respiratory Hazards.”

Aug 10, 2021
Spin Out Company from ECE Lab Receives NSF SBIR Phase I Funding
ECE Assistant Professor Yanzhi Wang is co-founder of a startup company CoCoPIE, LLC that was awarded a $250K Small Business Innovation Research Phase I NSF grant for “Enabling Real-Time AI on End Devices through Compression-Compilation Co-Design.”
Jun 01, 2021
The CoCoPIE Framework from Yanzhi Wang’s Group Featured in Communications of the ACM
The CoCoPIE framework from ECE Assistant Professor Yanzhi Wang’s group is reported in the featured article “CoCoPIE: Enabling Real-Time AI on Off-the-Shelf Mobile Devices via Compression-Compilation Co-Design” in Communications of the ACM.

Jun 01, 2021
ECE Research Paper Nominated for DATE Best Paper Award
Computer engineering PhD student Geng Yuan, PhD’23, and ECE Assistant Professor Yanzhi Wang’s research paper on “TinyADC: Peripheral Circuit-aware Weight Pruning Framework for Mixed-signal DNN Accelerators” was nominated for the Best Paper Award at Design Automation and Test Conference in Europe (DATE).

May 13, 2021
Yanzhi Wang Awarded Best Paper at ICLR Workshop
ECE Assistant Professor Yanzhi Wang was awarded the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award (YIP) through the US Army Research Laboratory for his proposal entitled “PatDNN: Towards 100X Acceleration and Real-Time DNN Execution on Mobile Platforms.”

Apr 15, 2021
Wang Receives IEEE TCSDM Early-Career Award
ECE Assistant Professor Yanzhi Wang received the IEEE Technical Committee on Secure and Dependable Measurement (TCSDM) Early-Career Award for his “contribution to deep learning model compression and real-time, mobile deep learning AI acceleration for precise calibration.”

Mar 03, 2021
ECE PhD Student Wins 1st Place at CGO 2021
Computer Engineering PhD student Malith Jayaweera won First Place in the student research competition at the International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO) 2021 for his research on “Data vs Instructions: Runtime Code Generation for Convolutions”.