Biography

Ronald F. DeMara received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1992. Since 1993, he has been a full-time faculty member at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, joint faculty of Computer Science, and Digital Learning Faculty Fellow. His research interests are in adaptive and resilient computing architectures with emphasis on reconfigurable logic devices, evolvable hardware, and post-CMOS devices. He has applied these to autonomous, embedded, and intelligent/neuromorphic systems, on which he has completed approximately 300 publications, 50 funded projects as PI or Co-PI totaling $13.8M with one patent granted and one provisional patent, and 49 graduates as Ph.D. dissertation and/or M.S. thesis advisor. He was previously an Associate Engineer at IBM and a Visiting Research Scientist at NASA Ames, in total for four years, and is a registered Professional Engineer since 1992.
His research has extended neuromorphic computing architectures using intrinsic stochastic post-CMOS devices; autonomous FPGA systems design at the register-level; soft error and BTI/TDDB resilient datapath design in deeply-scaled clocked CMOS; as well as clockless logic design and library development at the circuit-level; and dynamic runtime reconfiguration for energy/resiliency of signal processing fabrics at the system-level; and he has completed projects on these topics for NSF, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NSA, SRC, and others. Additional recent work includes Field Programmable Analog Arrays, STT cache/LUT design, and neuromorphic functional elements / design flows using probabilistic spin logic devices. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Computer Organization, Logic Design, Evolvable Hardware, and Emerging Device Computing Architectures.
He is a Senior Member of IEEE and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing during 2019-present. He also served as a Topical Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computers in 2017-2018, as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, and as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computers for multiple terms. Additionally, he served on the editorial board of Microprocessors and Microsystems, and the Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers. He was Guest Editor of IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing joint with Transactions on Computers 2017 Special Section on Innovation in Reconfigurable Fabrics. He was a Guest Editor of ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Special Issue on Configuring Algorithms, Processes, and Architectures. He also oversaw as Topical Editor the IEEE Transactions on Computers 2019 Special Section on Emerging Non-volatile Memory Technologies. He gave the Keynote Address at the IEEE RAW conference in 2017 and was Keynote Speaker of the IEEE Reconfigurable Computing and FPGAs (IEEE ReConFig) conference in 2006.
Professor DeMara received best paper recognitions at the 27th IEEE/ACM Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI in 2018, the International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design in 2017, as well as a featured paper in IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing in 2019, a front cover article of IEEE Transactions on Magnetics in 2018, paper of the month at IEEE Transactions on Computers in 2017 and also in 2016, an IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems article highlighted for presentation at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in 2017, a featured paper of IET Electronics Letters in 2016, the best paper award at the IEEE-sponsored Adaptive Hardware and Systems conference in 2015, the International Conference on Field Programmable Logic, and others. At UCF, he received the Distinguished Research Lecturer Award, Research Initiative Award (RIA) twice, the university-level Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) award twice, Faculty Advisor of the Year in the College of Engineering, university-level Teaching Initiative Program (TIP) Award four times, the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, and an Excellence in Professional Service Award. His contributions were also recognized with the Marchioli Collective Impact Award for transformative innovations by a faculty member at the university-level.
He is the Digital Learning Faculty Fellow at UCF leading thrusts in mixed-mode delivery, active learning, and assessment interwoven with tutoring initiatives in STEM degree programs across multiple colleges. He has been recognized as an iSTEM Fellow for instructional technology pilots within Engineering. For his contributions to advancing digitized assessments, he received the Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan Consortium) Effective Practice Award in 2018. He also received the Joseph M. Biedenbach Outstanding Engineering Educator Award from IEEE in 2008.