Ken Yang

C. K. Ken Yang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Chair

C.K. Ken Yang is a professor and chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

Yang joined the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering in 1998 and has focused his research on mixed analog-and-digital circuit design and its impact on computing systems. He is a pioneer in enabling multi-gigabit-per-second communication between processing elements and has introduced circuit techniques to overcome timing noise and data-bandwidth bottlenecks.

Prior to his appointment as chair in July 2020, Yang was the director of the ECE department’s Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory and served as vice chair of the Industry Affiliates program. He has worked closely with industry partners, such as Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, Keysight, Micron and Xilinx.

Yang is currently working on developing new capabilities and applications through novel devices, circuits and system design.

Previously, his research group worked on optimizing algorithms to evaluate the performance impact of introducing new device elements in circuit sub-systems such as analog to digital converters. Recently, the team introduced integrated parasitic diodes to enable sub-microwatt wireless radios and high-voltage drivers. Through collaborations with colleagues, he developed high-frequency circuits for distance-ranging applications and near terahertz circuits for communications.

Yang has also extended his work in data communications to computer networking and has introduced software and hardware mechanisms for virtualizing network connections between virtual machines.

In addition to authoring more than 100 publications, Yang has also served as an associate editor for Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, as well as being a guest editor of the Journal of Solid-State Circuits. He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow, a member of Tau Beta Pi and Phi Beta Kappa, a recipient of the 2003 and 2004 IBM Faculty Development Fellowship, and the 2003 Northrup Grumman Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2009, he co-founded Pluribus Networks, Inc., which uses software-defined networking to bring virtualization to computer networking.

Yang received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University, all in electrical engineering.