Hai “Helen” Li Receives IEEE Award in Circuits and Systems

Hai “Helen” Li, chair of Duke University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Marie Foote Reele E’46 Distinguished Professor, has been selected to receive the 2026 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Charles A. Desoer Technical Achievement Award.

The award recognizes individuals for outstanding, consistently generated technical contributions, as well as service to the circuits and systems community. Li was recognized at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) on May 26.

Li, who also holds an appointment in Duke’s Department of Computer Science, is internationally recognized for pioneering research at the intersection of circuits, computer architecture and artificial intelligence. Her work has advanced the design of energy-efficient hardware for machine learning and data-intensive computing, helping shape new approaches to AI acceleration, in-memory computing and neuromorphic systems.

A central theme of Li’s scholarship has been rethinking how computing systems are built as conventional hardware scaling becomes more difficult. Her research has helped establish new frameworks for integrating emerging memory technologies with computing architectures, enabling faster and more efficient processing for complex workloads. These contributions have had broad impact on both academic research and industrial practice.

Li is particularly known for her contributions to spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM), where her work helped address reliability challenges at advanced technology nodes and supported its development as a practical embedded memory technology. She has also contributed foundational insights into how machine learning algorithms can be mapped onto nonvolatile and memory-centric architectures, influencing the design of next-generation AI hardware.

Beyond her technical achievements, Li has made significant service contributions to the circuits and systems community through editorial leadership and conference organization. She served as the region 1-7 representative for the IEEE CAS Society Board of Governance in 2022-2023 and as Women-in-Engineer representative for 2026-2027.

Li has also served in leadership roles for major journals and conferences and has been a long-standing member of the executive committee of the Design Automation Conference, one of the field’s most prominent venues.

A prolific researcher and inventor, Li has authored more than 400 technical publications and holds 79 U.S. patents. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE and the National Academy of Inventors.