PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Bonan Yan

Also known as 燕博南

Bonan Yan is an assistant professor at Peking University's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and School of Integrated Circuits whose work focuses on compute-in-memory circuits and AI-chip design. After earning electrical engineering degrees at Beihang University in 2014, the University of Pittsburgh in 2017 and Duke University in 2020, he co-founded Pimchip Technologies in 2020 to develop compute-in-memory and edge AI chips. At Peking University, his group with Ru Huang presented an ADC-less digital SRAM compute-in-memory engine at ISSCC in 2022, and in January 2026 he coauthored a Nature paper on FLEXI, a flexible digital compute-in-memory chip for edge intelligence. He received the CCF-Huawei Huyanglin Fund Outstanding Project Award in 2022, Peking University's Boya and Weiming Young Fellow titles in 2023 and 2024, the ACM SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award in 2024, and the DATE Outstanding Reviewer Award in 2025.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2010–2020

    Degrees in electrical engineering

    From September 2010 to July 2014, he studies at Beihang University with Weisheng Zhao as his undergraduate research advisor, earning a B.S. in electrical and information engineering in 2014. He earns an M.S. in electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in 2017, and completes a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Duke University in 2020 under advisors Hai Li and Yiran Chen.

  2. March–November 2020

    Co-founding Pimchip Technologies

    From March 2020 to November 2020, he serves as cofounder and chief scientist of Pimchip Technologies, working on compute-in-memory, VLSI design and edge AI chips.

  3. 2022

    Digital SRAM compute-in-memory at ISSCC

    In 2022, at ISSCC, his research group with Ru Huang at Peking University's School of Integrated Circuits and Institute for Artificial Intelligence presents an ADC-less SRAM compute-in-memory acceleration engine with a 27.38 TOPS/W energy-efficiency ratio at INT8 and a density of 1.041 Mb/mm2.

  4. May 2022

    CCF-Huawei Huyanglin Fund award

    In May 2022, he receives the CCF-Huawei Huyanglin Fund Outstanding Project Award from the China Computer Federation.

  5. 2023–2024

    Boya and Weiming Young Fellow

    Peking University names him a Boya Young Fellow in October 2023, and the Peking University Education Foundation names him a Weiming Young Fellow in January 2024.

  6. 2024–2025

    SIGDA faculty and DATE reviewer awards

    He receives the ACM SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in June 2024. The Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE) gives him its Outstanding Reviewer Award in March 2025.

  7. January 2026

    FLEXI chip for edge intelligence

    In January 2026, he coauthors the Nature paper “A Flexible Digital Compute-In-Memory Chip For Edge Intelligence” as a corresponding author with Houfang Liu and Tian-Ling Ren, presenting FLEXI, a thin, lightweight flexible digital AI integrated circuit with a reconfigurable compute-in-memory architecture. FLEXI achieves over 97.4% accuracy in human daily activity monitoring using multimodal physiological signals.

  8. Since November 2020

    Assistant professor at Peking University

    Since November 2020, he serves as a tenure-track assistant professor at Peking University's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and School of Integrated Circuits. His research covers AI-chip design, emerging-memory VLSI and in-memory computing hardware architecture; in fall 2025, he teaches the graduate course Artificial Intelligence Chips: Design & Practice.

Career

  1. Since 2020Peking UniversityTenure-Track Assistant Professor
  2. 2020Pimchip TechnologiesCo-founder and Chief Scientist

Education

  1. 2020Duke UniversityPh.D.
  2. 2017University of PittsburghM.S.
  3. 2014Beihang UniversityB.S.

From the biography.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Bonan Yan. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Peking University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Peking University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes Peking University. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Bonan Yan yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Bonan Yan — Peking University Institute for Artificial Intelligence ai.pku.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Academic Portfolio (CV) bonany.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. [ISSCC 2022] Compute-In-Memory Chip Goes Digital-北京大学人工智能研究院 ai.pku.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award (ONFA) sigda.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Academic Portfolio (Publications) bonany.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. A flexible digital compute-in-memory chip for edge intelligence | Nature nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. A flexible digital compute-in-memory chip for edge intelligence ideas.repec.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Bonan Yan bonany.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.