Yao Lai
Logo University of Cambridge

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, working with Prof. Robert Mullins and Prof. Timothy M. Jones on AIxSIM, an ARIA-funded cross-stack simulation effort for novel AI hardware. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), where I was affiliated with mmlab@HKU and advised by Prof. Ping Luo. During my Ph.D., I was also a visiting collaborator at the UTDA Lab, The University of Texas at Austin, hosted by Prof. David Z. Pan (IEEE/ACM Fellow). I received my M.Eng. from the Software School, Tsinghua University, advised by Prof. Xiaojun Ye, and my B.Eng. from the Department of Microelectronics, Fudan University, advised by Prof. Xuan Zeng and Prof. Minge Jing. My research interests lie at the intersection of AI and Electronic Design Automation (AI4EDA), with a broader interest in AI for security.

Curriculum Vitae
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Education
  • The University of Hong Kong
    The University of Hong Kong
    Ph.D. in Computer Science
    Sep. 2021 - Nov. 2025
  • Tsinghua University
    Tsinghua University
    M.Eng. in Software Engineering
    Sep. 2017 - Jul. 2020
  • Fudan University
    Fudan University
    B.Eng. in Microelectronics Engineering
    Sep. 2013 - Jul. 2017
Experience
  • University of Cambridge
    University of Cambridge
    Postdoctoral Research Associate
    Dec. 2025 - Present
  • The University of Texas at Austin
    The University of Texas at Austin
    Visiting PhD Student
    Feb. 2024 - Jul. 2024
Honors & Awards
  • Electronics Best PhD Thesis
    2026
  • NeurIPS Scholar Award
    2024
  • Hong Kong PhD Fellowship
    2021
  • HKU Presidential PhD Scholar
    2021
  • Outstanding Graduate of Software School, Tsinghua University
    2020
  • Outstanding Bachelor Thesis Award, Fudan University
    2017
  • Outstanding Graduate of Shanghai, China
    2017
  • National Scholarship, China
    2015
Selected Publications (view all )
TCAD
AnalogCoder-Pro: Unifying Analog Circuit Generation and Optimization via Multi-modal LLMs

Yao Lai, Sungyoung Lee, Guojin Chen, Souradip Poddar, Mengkang Hu, Bei Yu, Ping Luo, David Z. Pan

IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems 2026

AnalogCoder-Pro is a multimodal LLM framework that automates analog circuit design by unifying topology generation and device sizing through a diagnosis-and-repair feedback loop, reusable circuit library, and Bayesian optimization, outperforming existing methods on a 13-circuit-type benchmark.

[Paper] [Code]

TCAD
AnalogCoder-Pro: Unifying Analog Circuit Generation and Optimization via Multi-modal LLMs

Yao Lai, Sungyoung Lee, Guojin Chen, Souradip Poddar, Mengkang Hu, Bei Yu, Ping Luo, David Z. Pan

IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems 2026

AnalogCoder-Pro is a multimodal LLM framework that automates analog circuit design by unifying topology generation and device sizing through a diagnosis-and-repair feedback loop, reusable circuit library, and Bayesian optimization, outperforming existing methods on a 13-circuit-type benchmark.

[Paper] [Code]

NeurIPS
FUDOKI: Discrete Flow-based Unified Understanding and Generation via Kinetic-Optimal Velocities

Jin Wang*, Yao Lai*, Aoxue Li, Shifeng Zhang, Jiacheng Sun, Chengyue Wu, Zhenguo Li, Ping Luo (* equal contribution)

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2025 Spotlight

FUDOKI is a novel unified multimodal model that replaces traditional autoregressive architectures with discrete flow matching, enabling more flexible and effective visual understanding and image generation with performance comparable to state-of-the-art models.

[Paper] [Project] [Code]

NeurIPS
FUDOKI: Discrete Flow-based Unified Understanding and Generation via Kinetic-Optimal Velocities

Jin Wang*, Yao Lai*, Aoxue Li, Shifeng Zhang, Jiacheng Sun, Chengyue Wu, Zhenguo Li, Ping Luo (* equal contribution)

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2025 Spotlight

FUDOKI is a novel unified multimodal model that replaces traditional autoregressive architectures with discrete flow matching, enabling more flexible and effective visual understanding and image generation with performance comparable to state-of-the-art models.

[Paper] [Project] [Code]

AAAI
AnalogCoder: Analog Circuit Design via Training-Free Code Generation

Yao Lai, Sungyoung Lee, Guojin Chen, Souradip Poddar, Mengkang Hu, David Z. Pan, Ping Luo

AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2025 OralAAAI 2025 Top-15 Influential Papers (Rank 11)

AnalogCoder is a training-free LLM agent for analog circuit design, using feedback-driven prompts and a circuit library to achieve high success rates, outperforming GPT-4o by designing various circuits.

[Paper] [Code]

AAAI
AnalogCoder: Analog Circuit Design via Training-Free Code Generation

Yao Lai, Sungyoung Lee, Guojin Chen, Souradip Poddar, Mengkang Hu, David Z. Pan, Ping Luo

AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2025 OralAAAI 2025 Top-15 Influential Papers (Rank 11)

AnalogCoder is a training-free LLM agent for analog circuit design, using feedback-driven prompts and a circuit library to achieve high success rates, outperforming GPT-4o by designing various circuits.

[Paper] [Code]

NeurIPS
Scalable and Effective Arithmetic Tree Generation for Adder and Multiplier Designs

Yao Lai, Jinxin Liu, David Z. Pan, Ping Luo

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2024 Spotlight

This work uses reinforcement learning to optimize adder and multiplier designs as tree generation tasks, achieving up to 49% faster speed and 45% smaller size, with scalability to 7nm technology.

[Paper] [Code] [Video]

NeurIPS
Scalable and Effective Arithmetic Tree Generation for Adder and Multiplier Designs

Yao Lai, Jinxin Liu, David Z. Pan, Ping Luo

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2024 Spotlight

This work uses reinforcement learning to optimize adder and multiplier designs as tree generation tasks, achieving up to 49% faster speed and 45% smaller size, with scalability to 7nm technology.

[Paper] [Code] [Video]

ICML
ChiPFormer: Transferable Chip Placement via Offline Decision Transformer

Yao Lai, Jinxin Liu, Zhentao Tang, Bin Wang, Jianye Hao, Ping Luo

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2023

ChiPFormer is an offline RL-based method that achieves 10x faster chip placement with superior quality and transferability to unseen circuits.

[Paper] [Project] [Code]

ICML
ChiPFormer: Transferable Chip Placement via Offline Decision Transformer

Yao Lai, Jinxin Liu, Zhentao Tang, Bin Wang, Jianye Hao, Ping Luo

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2023

ChiPFormer is an offline RL-based method that achieves 10x faster chip placement with superior quality and transferability to unseen circuits.

[Paper] [Project] [Code]

NeurIPS
MaskPlace: Fast Chip Placement via Reinforced Visual Representation Learning

Yao Lai, Yao Mu, Ping Luo

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 Spotlight

MaskPlace is a method that leverages pixel-level visual representation for chip placement, achieving superior performance with simpler rewards, 60%-90% wirelength reduction, and zero overlaps.

[Paper] [Code] [Project] [Video]

NeurIPS
MaskPlace: Fast Chip Placement via Reinforced Visual Representation Learning

Yao Lai, Yao Mu, Ping Luo

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022 Spotlight

MaskPlace is a method that leverages pixel-level visual representation for chip placement, achieving superior performance with simpler rewards, 60%-90% wirelength reduction, and zero overlaps.

[Paper] [Code] [Project] [Video]

ECAI
OpenSMax: Unknown Domain Generation Algorithm Detection

Yao Lai, Guolou Ping, Yuexin Wu, Chenhui Lu, Xiaojun Ye

European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2020

We propose OpenSMax, a LSTM-based model that learns patterns from domain names to detect botnet-generated domains and flag previously unseen DGA families as “unknown,” improving accuracy over prior methods while keeping false alarms under control.

[Paper] [Code]

ECAI
OpenSMax: Unknown Domain Generation Algorithm Detection

Yao Lai, Guolou Ping, Yuexin Wu, Chenhui Lu, Xiaojun Ye

European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2020

We propose OpenSMax, a LSTM-based model that learns patterns from domain names to detect botnet-generated domains and flag previously unseen DGA families as “unknown,” improving accuracy over prior methods while keeping false alarms under control.

[Paper] [Code]

All publications
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