Dr. Aakash Tyagi has been awarded an instructional grant to develop a one-of-a-kind course in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Tyagi, a professor of practice, was awarded $5,000 to complete his project “Bringing Chip Design Verification to Academia.” The goal is to establish a foundational course in chip design verification at Texas A&M.
The funding is being used to host experts from the industry for a weeklong engagement. The expert-in-residence engagements are occurring throughout the fall 2015 semester. Additional funding will be used to attend a flagship verification conference to facilitate building the course and curriculum.
Dr. Flemming Anderson, principal engineer at Intel Corporation, was the first engineer-in-residence. During his weeklong visit at the end of September, Anderson gave three lectures, collaborated with researchers and provided insight to students and faculty about course development and emerging technologies in computer science.
The completion of this project reaffirms Texas A&M’s position as a leader in computer science and engineering. Once the full vision for this course is complete, it will be the first of its kind in the nation.
“Since its first offering in spring 2015, this course has attracted talented and committed students,” Tyagi said. “Industry leaders-Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Intel and Qualcomm-have expressed excitement and continued assistance in the development of this course.
Tyagi joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in 2015 after 20 years of service at Intel. While working at Intel, he was the senior director of the Server Development Group. He worked on eight generations of CPUs, most recently managing the design and execution of Knights Landing, a second generation Xeon Phi product.
As a professor of practice, his academic track position focuses on educating undergraduate students in the department. His research interests center around high performance computing architectures and applications.
“In his short time in the department, Dr. Tyagi has already improved the material for several of our course offerings,” said computer science and engineering department head, professor and holder of the Ford Motor Company Design Professorship II, Dr. Dilma Da Silva. “I am very impressed with his novel approaches to refining the content of our courses. Besides this grant to involve key technical leaders from industry, he has also acquired funding to involve the students who took his courses in the process of improving project and assignments.”