Director of the Computer Architecture Laboratory
Concise Bio
Ronald F. DeMara is Pegasus Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, joint faculty of Computer Science, and the Digital Learning Faculty Fellow at the University of Central Florida, where he has been a full-time faculty member since 1993. His interests are in computer architecture, post-CMOS devices, and reconfigurable fabrics. He has applied these to autonomous, embedded, and intelligent/neuromorphic systems, on which he has completed over 320 articles, 50 funded projects as PI or Co-PI totaling $14.2M with one patent granted and one provisional patent, and 53 graduates as Ph.D. dissertation and/or M.S. thesis advisor. He was previously an Associate Engineer at IBM and a Visiting Research Scientist at NASA Ames, in total for four years, and is a registered Professional Engineer since 1992. He has served ten terms as a Topical Editor or Associate Editor including
IEEE Transactions on Computers, Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, Transactions on VLSI, IEEE Spectrum, and Technical Program Committees of various IEEE conferences including General Co-Chair of GLSVLSI-2023. He has been Keynote Speaker of
IEEE IEMtronics, IEEE RAW, and
IEEE ReConFig conferences, and Guest Editor of
IEEE Transactions on Computers 2017 Special Section on Innovation in Reconfigurable Fabrics and 2019 Special Section on Non-Volatile Memories. He received the
Joseph M. Biedenbach Outstanding Engineering Educator Award from IEEE.
Extended Bio
Ronald F. DeMara received the B.S.E.E. degree with High Honors from Lehigh University in 1987, M.S.E.E. degree from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1989, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1992. Since 1993, he has been a full-time faculty member at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and is Pegasus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, joint faculty of Computer Science, and Digital Learning Faculty Fellow. His research interests are in adaptive and resilient computing architectures with emphasis on reconfigurable logic devices, evolvable hardware, and post-CMOS devices. He has applied these to autonomous, embedded, and intelligent/neuromorphic systems, on which he has completed over 300 articles, 49 funded projects as PI or Co-PI totaling $13.8M with one patent granted and one provisional patent, and 50 graduates as Ph.D. dissertation and/or M.S. thesis advisor. He was previously an Associate Engineer at IBM and a Visiting Research Scientist at NASA Ames, in total for four years, and is a registered Professional Engineer since 1992.
His research has extended neuromorphic computing architectures using intrinsic stochastic post-CMOS devices; autonomous FPGA systems design at the register-level; soft error and BTI/TDDB resilient datapath design in deeply-scaled clocked CMOS; as well as clockless logic design and library development at the circuit-level; and dynamic runtime reconfiguration for energy/resiliency of signal processing fabrics at the system-level. He has completed projects on these topics sponsored by NSF, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NSA, SRC, and others. Additional recent work includes Field Programmable Analog Arrays, STT cache/LUT design, and neuromorphic functional elements/design flows of probabilistic spin logic devices. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Computer Organization, Logic Design, Evolvable Hardware, and Emerging Device Computing Architectures.
He is a Senior Member of IEEE and currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of
IEEE Spectrum for the 2020 – 2021 term. He has completed ten terms as an Editor of various journals, including as Associate Editor of
IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing during 2019, as Senior/Topical Editor of
IEEE Transactions on Computers in 2017-2018, as well as multiple terms as Associate Editor of
IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems and as an Associate Editor of
IEEE Transactions on Computers. Additionally, he served on the editorial board of
Microprocessors and Microsystems and the
Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers. He oversaw as Topical Editor the
IEEE Transactions on Computers Special Section on “Emerging Non-volatile Memory Technologies: from Devices to Architectures and Systems” in 2019. He was lead Guest Editor of
IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing joint with
IEEE Transactions on Computers Special Sections on “Innovation in Reconfigurable Computing Fabrics from Devices to Architectures” in 2017. He was also a Guest Editor of
ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Special Issue on Configuring Algorithms, Processes, and Architectures. He gave Keynote Addresses at the
IEEE International IOT, Electronics, and Mechatronics Conference (IEEE IEMtronics) in 2020,
24th Annual IEEE Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (IEEE RAW) conference in 2017, and
IEEE International Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs (IEEE ReConFig) conference in 2006.
Professor DeMara received best paper recognition at the
ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI in 2018 and its best poster award in 2019, the
International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design in 2017, and the IEEE-sponsored
Adaptive Hardware and Systems conference in 2015, the
International Conference on Field Programmable Logic, and others. He published a front-cover featured article in
IEEE Computer magazine special issue on cognitive computing architectures in 2019 and the cover-page article in an
IEEE Transactions on Magnetics regular issue during 2018, as well as a featured paper of the
IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing in 2019, a paper-of-the month in
IEEE Transactions on Computers in 2017 and also in 2016, a featured article in
IET Electronics Letters in 2016, and his
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems article was recognized for presentation at the
IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in 2017.
At UCF, he received the
Distinguished Research Lecturer Award, Research Initiative Award (RIA) twice, the university-level
Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) award twice,
Faculty Advisor of the Year in the College of Engineering, university-level
Teaching Initiative Program (TIP) Award four times, the
Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, the
Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, and an
Excellence in Professional Service Award. His contributions were also recognized with the
Marchioli Collective Impact Award for transformative innovations by a faculty member at the university-level. He is the
Digital Learning Faculty Fellow at UCF leading thrusts in mixed-mode delivery, active learning, and assessment interwoven with tutoring initiatives in STEM degree programs across multiple colleges. He has been recognized as an
iSTEM Fellow for instructional technology pilots within Engineering. For his contributions to advancing digitized assessments, he received the Online Learning Consortium
(formerly Sloan Consortium) Effective Practice Award in 2018. He also received the
Joseph M. Biedenbach Outstanding Engineering Educator Award from IEEE in 2008.
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6864-7255
