UCF professor Yan Solihin has been honored by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Microarchitecture (ACM SIGMICRO) with the Distinguished Service Award. He was recognized for the achievement at the International Symposium on Microarchitecture in Toronto, held from Oct. 28 to Nov. 1, 2023.
The Distinguished Service Award is presented to a member who has made noteworthy contributions to the processor microarchitecture and microsystems community, in addition to demonstrating impactful service to ACM SIGMICRO and its committees.
“My service to ACM is a way for me to give back to the community that has been very supportive of young faculty members advancing in their careers, including my own,” Solihin says. “It has been an honor for me to be a part of this vibrant community of researchers.”
An active member of ACM since 2010, Solihin has served the organization in numerous leadership roles. He served as the chair of the ACM SIGMICRO History Project, an endeavor he particularly enjoyed as it gave him the opportunity to learn from pioneers in computer architecture.
He also served as a program chair for the International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) in 2020, and as a general co-chair for the Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) in 2023.
Throughout his career, Solihin has also advocated for microarchitecture research at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and established a partnership between Intel and NSF for a new program that advanced foundational research in microarchitecture.
Solihin is a Charles N. Millican Professor of Computer Science and the director for UCF’s Cyber Security and Privacy Cluster. Since joining UCF in 2018, he has led the growth of the cluster from four to 15 faculty members, mentored more than 50 doctoral students and founded two new labs. Under his leadership, the cluster developed the Master of Science in Cyber Security and Privacy, and established the NSF Scholarship of Service in Cyber Security and Privacy.
His contributions to cybersecurity include key technologies for trustworthy cloud computing, including split-counter mode memory encryption and the Bonsai Merkle Tree. Some of the key discoveries and designs have been incorporated into commercial processors such as Intel SGX.
He is a recipient of the 2023 HPCA Test of Time Award, the 2005 and 2010 IBM Faculty Partnership Award, the 2004 NSF Faculty Early Career Award and the 1997 AT&T Leadership Award. Other accolades include being listed in the Computer Architecture Top-Ranked Hall of Fame, the ISCA Hall of Fame and the HPCA Hall of Fame. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Solihin earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Bandung Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Indonesia Open University. He received a master’s degree in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological University, and a master’s and a doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.