Dr. David Pan is currently an assistant professor at Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, the University of Texas at Austin, where he joined in August 2003. He received his Ph.D. (with honor) in computer science from UCLA in December 2000. Prior to UT, he was a Research Staff Member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. His research interests include nanometer VLSI physical design closure, low power design with novel circuitry and CAD, interconnect modeling, synthesis and planning, design space exploration of SoC, SoP and embedded systems. He has published over 20 technical papers and has 6 U.S. patents issued or pending. He is a program committee member for ICCAD, ISPD, ASPDAC, GLSVLSI, and SLIP. Dr. Pan received the Best Paper in Session Award from SRC Techcon 1998, IBM Research Fellowship for 1999-2000, Dimitris Chorafas Foundation Award for research excellence in 2000, SRC Inventor Recognition Award in 2000, and Outstanding Ph.D. Award from UCLA Computer Science Department in 2001. At IBM, he was a key research member of Placement Driven Synthesis (PDS), IBM's flagship design closure tool, which won IBM Research 2002 Outstanding Accomplishment. He received IBM Bravo Award in 2003 for contributions to PDS. He served as an industrial mentor to a number of SRC sponsored research projects while at IBM.