This past September, Andrew Gunter, one of our current PhD students in ECE was selected to attend the 12th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF) in Germany, a prestigious and highly competitive event that brings together outstanding early-career researchers from around the world with laureates of the Turing Award, Fields Medal, and other major international honors! We were thrilled to connect with Andrew to learn more about his research journey, his future ambitions, and what this remarkable achievement meant to him.
1) What are you currently studying at UBC and what drew you to your area within Electrical and Computer Engineering?
Under Professor Steve Wilton’s supervision, I’m researching how machine learning can be applied to electronic design automation for FPGAs.FPGAs are reconfigurable computing devices that can be programmed to implement custom digital circuits, but that reconfiguration process is incredibly complex so we are investigating how modern ML can intelligently solve the problems underlying this complexity. I actually got into this area as a summer-term undergraduate researcher back at the University of Guelph in 2017; I had applied to many potential projects, but this idea of using machine intelligence to improve machinery was the most interesting, and I’ve stuck with it ever since.
2) What keeps you motivated in this field and what do you find most exciting or rewarding about your research?
It’s a mix of the type of problems I get to solve and the impact of solving them. I get to reason about computer hardware problems, which I find fascinating, but I write software to solve these problems, which I find smoother than actually tinkering with hardware. It’s also a field which has global significance but isn’t very heavily populated, so I’m able to have a relatively large impact as an individual researcher. A typical conference in my field may have 100 attendees, whereas other fields may have 10,000.
3) Tell us about your selection to attend the 12th Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany this past September! How did you come to apply, and what was it like to be selected?
Professor Wilton sent me an email a year ago saying there was a unique conference with applications open and that it would be highly competitive but worth the time to apply. I thought “Why not?” and applied on a whim. Being selected was highly validating after years of research, but I still didn’t properly understand what the event itself would be like. Actually attending was surreal.
4) For those who might not be familiar, what was the Heidelberg Laureate Forum actually like?
The HLF is not a traditional academic conference. It’s a week of scientific discussion and social interaction between 200 young researchers and the laureates of the highest awards in Mathematics and Computer Science. There are “research talks”, but not the typical kind about incremental results in a paper. The laureates give talks on “big picture” ideas like how we expect the relationship between humanity and AI to develop over the coming decades. Between the talks, we socialized in smaller, intimate settings and enjoyed several excursions in and around the city of Heidelberg. I was also one of 30 young researchers further selected for the HLF “Poster Flash” where we each gave a 2-minute presentation about our research (to the entire HLF audience including laureates and journalists) followed by a poster session where people could ask for more details!
5) What stood out to you most during the week, and what kinds of interactions or moments made the biggest impression?
The most memorable moments of the HLF happen over a cup of coffee, a clink of beer steins, or a shared meal. I will never forget chatting with Professors Jack Dongarra (2021 Turing Award) and David Patterson (2017 Turing Award) for hours over dinner, or my “small group interaction” event, where 7 of us young researchers got to chat with Professor Richard Sutton (2024 Turing Award) for an hour without distraction. I’ll also never forget the boat party, the Bavarian cultural evening, or the adventures I shared with the rest of the young researchers.
6) Were there any particular lessons, ideas, or pieces of advice from the laureates that really stuck with you?
Professor Sutton gave me a few pieces of advice. First, be kind – it’s always a good thing. Second, be humble – it’s best for your mind. Third, be optimistic – it will make your future better. Finally, pursue the obvious ideas that others don’t yet see. He’s one of the pioneers of reinforcement learning, a technique which fuels decision-making in AI; he claimed that, when he first started out, it was obvious the world needed methods which could learn without explicit programming but people were largely ignoring the possibility. In hindsight, he was correct, but I think he has stretched the definition of “obvious” a little!
7) Outside of the academic sessions, the HLF also emphasizes cultural exchange and community among young researchers from all over the world. What was it like connecting with this cohort?
This is secretly the best aspect of the HLF, the camaraderie of young researchers. The laureates provide wisdom while the other young researchers provide a deeper friendship. It was a privilege to meet the other young researchers and spend the week with them; they were, without exception, all wonderful people. They are also a relatively high-achieving demographic, where everybody wants to work on important problems and explore big ideas. This has me still reflecting on my own research trajectory; maybe it’s possible to accomplish more than I had considered before.
8) How do you think your time at the HLF will influence your future career direction?
Most PhD students in ECE eventually ask themselves two questions: First, academia or industry? Second, research or engineering? After the HLF, I feel that the answer to the first question isn’t too important – the best work will be done as a collaboration between academia and industry. However, for me, the answer to the second question ultimately has to be research.
9) What advice or tips would you give to younger students interested in pursuing research or applying to prestigious events like the HLF?
Try to do difficult things. Be prepared for many failures and rejections. They are a necessary part of the process of doing difficult things. Make sure you have a good mentor or two to guide those failures toward success.
10) Where do you hope to be in five years, professionally and personally?
In Vancouver, thinking about difficult problems in computer hardware, ML/AI, and autonomous systems. I also want to be doing more in the realm of research organization, scientific communication, and connecting with local communities. More personally, I enjoy competition and I hope to let my competitive spirit breathe some fresh air after I finish my PhD. Currently it’s looking like I might do that through tennis or a board game like chess, but I need to graduate before deciding!
Andrew Gunter completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering at the University of Guelph in 2019, where his undergraduate research focused on applying machine learning (ML) to field-programmable gate array (FPGA) computer-aided design (CAD). He began his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC in 2020, continuing his work by developing ML-based approaches to improve FPGA CAD engineering productivity. His doctoral research has been published at leading conferences including FCCM, MLCAD, FPL, and FPT. Throughout his graduate studies, Andrew complemented his academic efforts with part-time research at Singulos Research Inc., where he applied computer vision techniques to enable mixed-reality gameplay experiences across phones, tablets, headsets, and smart glasses.