Speaking of Tsinghua’s ace major, what do you think of?

The first reaction of many people may be “Your Department” and “Yao Class” – one is the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University, which is recognized as the strongest in China, and the other is the “Tsinghua School Computer Science Experiment” where Yao Qizhi, the only Chinese winner of the Turing Award, sits. class”.

The “soft” side of Tsinghua’s computer is now flourishing, but in fact, in the field of computer hardware, the graduates from Tsinghua can be regarded as supporting half of the industry.

And the common name behind them, the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University, just celebrated its 70th birthday not long ago.In the 1970s, the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University cultivated the first batch of computer hardware and semiconductor talents in China. Since then, there has been no shortage of “golden generation”…

△ Source: Tsinghua Alumni Association

This kind of inheritance has left a deep impression on the academic world, the Internet, and the semiconductor industry.

Once academicians came out in large numbers, now the “post-00s” academic force is rising

As one of the first three engineering departments of Tsinghua University, the academic status of the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University is evident from the lineup of academicians celebrating the 70th anniversary of the department:

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Zhou Bingkun of the Department of Electronic Engineering, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Hou Chaohuan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Wu Hequan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Fan Bangkui, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Lu Yueguang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Peng Lianmao, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Dong Jiahong, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Dai Qionghai, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering , Professor Luo Yi of the Department of Electronic Engineering, etc.

From Meng Zhaoying, the first head of the department in the 1950s, to Lu Jianhua, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Luo Yi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University can be said to never lack academicians.

Pulling in the timeline, this academic gene is still being inherited and developed, and it will bear fruit. Take Tsinghua EE’s “post-90s” as an example. Chen Yiran, a full professor of Duke University’s Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and an IEEE/ACM Fellow, is a Class 94 alumnus of the Department of Electronics, Tsinghua University. He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University in 1998 and 2001, respectively.

In the “70 Years and 70 People” series of interviews in the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University, when talking about his academic career in Tsinghua University, Professor Chen Yiran described it as “unforgettable” and revealed a past event that impressed him:

During her master’s degree, Chen Yiran once started a business with her classmates, so she seldom went to the laboratory, which delayed a lot of scientific research progress.

At that time, his mentor, Professor Fan Chongcheng, took the initiative to talk to him. After hearing Chen Yiran’s idea of ​​”I learned a lot of things outside the university that I couldn’t learn in university,” Professor Fan said after a long silence: I think the reason why the university is There must be something that can only be learned here.

It was these words that inspired Chen Yiran and influenced his later career choice: In the end, I chose to be a university teacher and concentrate on research on campus, which actually had a lot to do with Teacher Fan’s ‘being a head-on’.

Today, in addition to being a professor at Duke University, he is also the director of the National Natural Science Foundation (NSF) New Sustainable and Intelligent Computing (ASIC) Enterprise-School Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC), Duke Center for Computational Evolutionary Intelligence (CEI) ) co-director, focusing on new memory and storage systems, computer learning and neuromorphic computing, and mobile computing systems.

Before entering academia, Professor Chen Yiran also spent 5 years in industry, and worked in R&D at Synopsys and Seagate.

The latest news is that Professor Chen Yiran also teamed up with Tsinghua alumnus Yang Yue to enter the AI ​​chip market and established Pingxin Technology, which aims to promote the research and application of AI chip in-memory computing technology.

The current dean of the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University and the first post-80s dean of the Department of Electronics, Professor Wang Yu, became a member of the Department of Electronics as early as 1998.

In 2002, he graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University with a bachelor’s degree, and then continued to study for a Ph.D. It is worth mentioning that Professor Wang Yu participated in the establishment of the AI ​​chip company Shenjian in 2016, and his students Yao Song and Shan Yi were founding members of the company. Shenjian was one of the fastest-growing AI chip startups in China at that time. In 2018, Shenjian was acquired by Xilinx, the world’s largest FPGA manufacturer.

And the “post-00s” of the Tsinghua Electronics Department are now beginning to emerge. For example, 07-level Tsinghua EE Fang Fei. She received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University in 2011 and a doctorate degree in computer science from the University of Southern California in 2016.

She is now an Assistant Professor at the Software Institute at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, researching computational game theory and its applications to security and sustainability.

This year, Fang Fei and five Tsinghua alumni, including Yao class graduate Chen Danqi, won the Sloan Research Award. This award has attracted much attention because of the name of “Nobel Prize Weather Vane”.

Tsinghua EE graduates in the Internet field

In addition to the succession in academia, and opening the resumes of Internet giants, the appearance rate of “Tsinghua Electronics Department” is also eye-catching. For example, Xie Yuan, chief scientist of Ali Pingtou Ge.

Xie Yuan is also a “post-90s” from the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University, who entered Tsinghua University in 1991.

After earning his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 2002, Yuan Xie worked at IBM for a year, but soon returned to academia to join Penn State University. Just 5 years later, he was awarded tenure and was promoted to full professor in 2012.

But in Xie Yuan’s view: problems in industry can influence the topic selection of academia; achievements in academia can promote the application of new technologies in industry. Only the close integration of academia and industry can promote new directions and new research, which is a good positive cycle.

Therefore, during his sabbatical in 2012-2013, he stepped into the industry again and joined AMD, responsible for forming and leading the research department of AMD Beijing R&D Center.

After returning to academia, Xie Yuan transferred to UC Santa Barbara as a full professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Four years later, Xie Yuan returned to China and joined Alibaba. As a scientist of Dharma Academy, he helped Alibaba to found Pingtouge Semiconductor Chip Company and served as chief technology officer and chief scientist.

Today, Xie Yuan has become a Fellow of the three major societies (ACM, IEEE, and AAAS), and he is popular all over the world in academia and industry. It is worth mentioning that Professor Wang Yu is one of Professor Xie Yuan’s disciples.

The well-known Meituan founder Wang Xing, Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen, and Shangtang co-founder Yang Fan are also graduates of the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University. In fact, in addition to founders and executives, in companies such as Meituan and SenseTime, Tsinghua EE’s genes may have a deeper influence.

For this 70th anniversary celebration, the friends of SenseTime Electronics sent a collective blessing to the matriarch:

△ Source: THU Electronics Department Alumni Association

The legendary Tsinghua EE85 series

In the “old line” integrated circuit industry of the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University, the status of the friends is even more self-evident.

For example, this group of graduates from the 85th grade (EE85) of the Department of Electronics, Tsinghua University, is said to be “legendary” in the market: many of them have become founders and executives of listed companies in the semiconductor field, propping up “half of the country” in China’s semiconductor industry. .

They have joined the industry and have witnessed the 30 years of China’s semiconductor industry from being stagnant to thriving. Today, the group of companies with Tsinghua EE85 genes led by them occupies 4 seats in the top 15 of the total market value of China’s A-share semiconductor listed companies.

The leading companies in the three sub-sectors of analog chips, memory chips, and radio frequency chips were also founded by them.

These “legends” include:

“The richest man in chips”, founder of Weir Shares Yu Renrong

Yu Renrong is from Ningbo, Zhejiang, and was admitted to Tsinghua University from Zhenhai Middle School. In college, not only was he able to play mahjong all night and then took the first place in the school mathematics competition, he also had a “business acumen” and earned a lot of pocket money by relying on the small business of “buying Haidian papers in Baoding”.

In his sophomore year, he chose image processing; after graduating from university, he joined Inspur as an engineer; within two years, he moved to Hong Kong Longyue Electronics, which distributes electronic components as a sales manager.

After 6 years, he resigned again, and established a number of similar companies on his own to become peers with his former company.

In 2007, 41-year-old Yu Renrong founded Weir Shares, which is mainly engaged in the design and distribution of semiconductor components, integrating his previous companies and acquiring other companies.

10 years later, Weir shares were listed on A-shares.

Subsequently, Yu Renrong successively acquired 96.08% equity of Beijing Haowei, 42.27% equity of Spicco, and 79.93% equity of Shixinyuan. After a “snake swallowing elephant”, Yu Renrong not only officially entered the CMOS image sensor field, but also allowed the company to enter the field of CMOS image sensors. Become the second A-share semiconductor company with a market value of over 100 billion.

(Beijing OmniVision, formerly known as the veteran American giant OmniVision Technology, is one of the largest companies in the CMOS sensor (CIS) field, and its net worth at that time was almost 8 times that of Weil’s shares.)

In the latest “2021 Hurun Rich List”, Yu Renrong ranked 63rd with 80 billion yuan.

Last year, Yu Renrong also invested 30 billion yuan to invest in the establishment of a new type of research university “Eastern University of Technology” (the proposed name) in his hometown of Ningbo.

Zhao Weiguo, Chairman of Ziguang Group

Zhao Weiguo was admitted to Tsinghua University in 1985 from Shawan County, Tacheng Prefecture, Xinjiang, and was the first student in the county to be admitted to Tsinghua University.

When he was a sophomore in his major, he chose to study microwave, and when he entered the university, he ranked 17th and still kept his rank when he graduated.

After graduating from university, he worked as an engineer and deputy general manager in two companies in Zhongguancun; three years later, he returned to Tsinghua Electronics Department to study for postgraduate studies, and worked part-time as an engineer in the automatic control system of Tsinghua Unigroup.

As soon as he graduated from graduate school, he served as the deputy general manager of the Automation Engineering Division of Tsinghua Unigroup. Later, he was transferred to Tsinghua Tongfang, from the director of the communication research institute to the general manager of the company, and participated in the first capital operation after the listing of Tongfang – the acquisition of Jiangxi Radio Factory.

In 2014, when his alumni returned to China to start businesses, he returned to Xinjiang and became the chairman of Beijing Jiankun Investment Group. The company mainly invests in real estate and mining, and Zhao Weiguo also made a pot of gold.

In 2009, when Ziguang was facing difficulties in its operation, Zhao Weiguo accepted the invitation to return to Ziguang and became the chairman of Ziguang. Ziguang Group has since entered the era of Zhao Weiguo.

Under his leadership, Tsinghua Unigroup has invested 100 billion yuan to invest and acquire nearly 20 companies, 11 of which are involved in the chip field.

For example, in 2013 and 2014, Tsinghua Unigroup successively acquired the mobile phone chip companies Spreadtrum and RDA, which were delisted from the privatization of Nasdaq in the United States, and became the third leading Chinese company in terms of global mobile phone baseband chip shipments.

The top two at the time were Qualcomm and MediaTek. In February this year, Zhao Weiguo stepped down as chairman of Ziguang. When the “2021 Hurun Rich List” was announced, he ranked 252 with a fortune of 25 billion yuan.

Shu Qingming, one of the founders of Zhaoyi Innovation

Founded in 2005, Zhaoyi Innovation is the first company in China to manufacture memory chips, and ranks among the top three in the world in the field of memory chips “NOR Flash”. It was co-founded by Class of 89 alumni Zhu Yiming and Class of 85 Shu Qingming, with $920,000 in start-up funding from other alumni.

Shu Qingming completed his Ph.D. degree in Tsinghua University and worked as a senior circuit design engineer for Oak Technology, a listed company in the United States. Later, he became the director and deputy general manager of Zhaoyi Innovation.

In 2016, Zhaoyi Innovation was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Its main core products are NOR series flash memory of memory and MCU microcontroller products. In 2018, the company deployed sensor products such as fingerprint chips and touch chips through the acquisition of Shanghai Siliwei.

△ The third from the left is Shu Qingming

Feng Chenhui, co-founder of Zhuosheng Microelectronics

Feng Chenhui holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University. After graduation, he worked as a software engineer in a domestic company for two years, and then worked in the United States for nine years.

In 2006, he and two friends returned to China to establish Zhuosheng Microelectronics. In the early days, he developed mobile TV chips, and later adjusted his direction to make RF front-end chips. It has now become a Huawei mobile phone supplier.

In 2019, Zhuoshengwei was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

At present, the total market value of these four companies alone has exceeded 300 billion yuan.

In addition, more than ten semiconductors including Zhao Lixin, founder of Geke Microelectronics, Zhao Lidong, founder of Suiyuan Technology, Ren Zhijun, Executive Vice President of Ziguang Group, Liu Weidong, founder of Jiuhao Electronics, and Yu Qunhui, Deputy General Manager of Feitian Chengxin Technology. The founders or executives of the relevant companies are all from the 85th grade of the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University.

Before and after the 85th grade, there was also Zhao Haijun, a 83rd grade electronics graduate, who served as the chief operating officer, executive vice president and co-CEO of SMIC.

The development history of the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University

All in all, as one of the first three engineering departments of Tsinghua University, the Department of Electronic Engineering can be said to have exported countless talents to my country’s academia, the Internet/semiconductor industry, and even wider fields.

At the end of the article, we may wish to review its development process together.

The predecessor of the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University was the Telecommunications Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering established in 1932. In 1952, when the colleges and departments were adjusted, the Telecommunication Group of Tsinghua University and the Department of Electrical Engineering of Peking University was merged, and then there was the Department of Radio Engineering.

Since then, due to the needs of discipline development, the Department of Radio Engineering was renamed the Department of Radio Electronics in 1956, and officially changed its name to the Department of Electronic Engineering in 1989.

It is worth mentioning that, from the establishment of the department in 1952 to 1965, the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University completed a 600/1200 baud digital transmitter, 8 PCM communication terminals, a 3cm periodic magnetic field focusing broadband low-power traveling wave tube, and a 10cm solid-state low-power traveling wave tube. Noise parametric amplifier and other projects, and took the lead in starting silicon transistor fabrication and research work on integrated circuits.

In the past ten years, the Department of Electronic Engineering has also continuously improved in the ranking of electrical and electronic disciplines in global universities, and has entered the forefront of world-class disciplines.

One More Thing

By the way, although the Department of Electronics can be said to be one of the most “volume” departments in Tsinghua University, it has produced many literary and artistic representatives.

Gao Xiaosong, Li Jian and Miao Jie of “Shui Mu Nian Hua” also graduated here. (manual dog head)

Reference link:

[1]https://www.tsinghua.org.cn/info/1952/16568.htm

[2]https://70.ee.tsinghua.edu.cn/a70n70r.htm

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