Yifan Qin

Yifan Qin (秦一凡)

I am a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Before that, I received my B.E. and M.S. in Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Now I am in Meta Super Intelligence Lab (MSL) as a Research Scientist Intern, working on AI infrastructure and kernel optimization. Welcome to contact me for research collaboration or work opportunities!

Contact: yqin3 [at] nd [dot] edu

Research

I work on robust and efficient AI systems for acceleration, with an emphasis on AI infrastructure and practical hardware-software co-design.

News

Jun 2026	Joining Meta MSL as a Research Scientist Intern.
March 2026	Passing Ph.D. oral examination.

Projects

	Real-Time Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection: Efficient ML Inference System ACCESS Center, Hong Kong, June 2024 End-to-end inference system demonstrated on a silicon prototype under strict latency and energy constraints.
	Uncertainty-Aware ML Inference for Real-Time Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection ISSCC, San Francisco, February 2025 Uncertainty-aware inference system demonstrated on a silicon prototype for reliable arrhythmia detection under energy and reliability constraints.

Selected Publications

Journal articles

	NeFT: Negative Feedback Training to Improve Robustness of Compute-In-Memory DNN Accelerators Yifan Qin, Zheyu Yan, Dailin Gan, Jun Xia, Zixuan Pan, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. 2025 TCAD: IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems.
	Recent progress on memristive convolutional neural networks for edge intelligence Yifan Qin, Han Bao, Feng Wang, Jia Chen, Yi Li, and Xiangshui Miao. 2020 AIS: Advanced Intelligent Systems. Journal Back Cover.
	Design of high robustness BNN inference accelerator based on binary memristors Yifan Qin, Rui Kuang, Xiaodi Huang, Yi Li, Jia Chen, and Xiangshui Miao. 2020 TED: IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

Conference papers

	TSB: Tiny Shared Block for Efficient DNN Deployment on NVCIM Accelerators Yifan Qin, Zheyu Yan, Zixuan Pan, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. 2024 ICCAD: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (acceptance rate 24%).
	A 10.60 μW 150 GOPS Mixed-Bit-Width Sparse CNN Accelerator for Life-Threatening Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Yifan Qin, Zhenge Jia, Zheyu Yan, Jay Mok, Manto Yung, Yu Liu, Xuejiao Liu, Wujie Wen, Luhong Liang, Kwang-Ting Tim Cheng, X. Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. 2024 ASP-DAC: Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference.
	On the viability of using LLMs for SW/HW co-design: An example in designing CiM DNN accelerators Zheyu Yan, Yifan Qin, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. 2023 SOCC: IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference.
	Towards Uncertainty-Quantifiable Biomedical Intelligence: Mixed-signal Compute-in-Entropy for Bayesian Neural Networks Likai Pei, Yifan Qin, Zephan M. Enciso, Boyang Cheng, Jianbo Liu, Steven Davis, Zhenge Jia, Michael Niemier, Yiyu Shi, X. Sharon Hu, and Ningyuan Cao. 2024 ICCAD: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design. *Equal contribution. William J. McCalla Best Paper Award Candidate.
	Improving realistic worst-case performance of NVCiM DNN accelerators through training with right-censored Gaussian noise Zheyu Yan, Yifan Qin, Wujie Wen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, and Yiyu Shi. 2023 ICCAD: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design. William J. McCalla Best Paper Award.
	A 65nm Uncertainty-quantifiable Ventricular Arrhythmia Detection Engine with 1.75 μJ per Inference Jianbo Liu, Zephan Enciso, Boyang Cheng, Likai Pei, Steven Davis, Yifan Qin, Zhenge Jia, Xiaobo Sharon Hu, Yiyu Shi, and Ningyuan Cao. 2025 ISSCC: IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference.
	SGI: Structured 2D Gaussians for Efficient and Compact Large Image Representation Zixuan Pan, Kaiyuan Tang, Jun Xia, Yifan Qin, Lin Gu, Chaoli Wang, Jianxu Chen, and Yiyu Shi. 2026 CVPR: IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

Patents

Issued	A hardware neural network batch normalization system CN202011251999.9 · Issued May 20, 2022.
Issued	A matrix-vector multiplication circuit and calculation method CN201910792384.8 · Issued October 8, 2021.

Honors & Awards

ICCAD	William J. McCalla Best Paper Award IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design.
ICCAD	William J. McCalla Best Paper Award Candidate IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design.
DAC	Young Fellow Design Automation Conference.
HUST	Outstanding Graduate Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
CUMCM	National Second Prize China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling, Ministry of Education, China.

Talks

Shandong University, Aug 2024 — Efficient and Robust LLMs under System and Noise Constraints

Zhejiang University, Aug 2024 — Uncertainty-aware ML Inference for Real-World Deployment

University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, Aug 2024 — Robust and Efficient ML Systems: From Training to Deployment

Southern University of Science and Technology, Jul 2024 — Efficient ML Inference for Resource-Constrained Systems

AI Chip Center for Emerging Smart Systems, HKUST, Jun 2024 — End-to-End Efficient LLM Systems under Practical Constraints

Activities & Interests

Outside of research, I have a long-standing interest in art and creative expression. One of my paintings was included in a provincial-level art textbook published by the People's Education Press in China. I enjoy drawing and writing, and I stay active through table tennis, soccer, and regular workouts.

President	Table Tennis Association of Huazhong University of Science and Technology Managed school sports competitions and coordinated project reporting and financial reimbursement.
Member	Undergraduate Mathematical Modeling Team, HUST National Second Prize in the China Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
Athlete	College table tennis team, HUST Served on the college team alongside many professional players.
Docent	Wuhan Museum Introduced the museum's opening exhibition and artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasties.