Texas ECE PhD student Wuxi Li won the 2nd Place Silver Medal at the ACM/SIGDA Student Research Competition - Graduate Category (ACM/SIGDA SRC) held at the 2018 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD). The title of his research for the competition was "UTPlaceF: A High-Performance Placement Engine For Modern FPGAs."

The ACM Student Research Competition at ICCAD 2018 is "an internationally recognized venue enabling undergraduate and graduate students who are ACM members to experience the research world, share research results, exchange ideas, and rub shoulders with academic and industry luminaries." It is sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Wuxi Li is supervised by Dr. David Z. Pan, and he previously won First Place at the ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) FPGA Placement Contests two years in a row, in 2016 and 2017. Prior to coming to UT, he graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a B.S. in Microelectronics in 2013.

In 2017, Meng Li, also supervised by Dr. David Pan, won the First Place Gold Medal at the ACM/SIGDA SRC. Meng then went on to win First Place at the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals.