Artifact Details

Title

Liu, David (C.L.) oral history

Catalog Number

102739931

Type

Moving image

Description

David Liu was born in China in 1934, and moved to Macau at age 4 where he and his family stayed for 14 years. He then moved to Taiwan where he entered the College of Engineering, now known as the National Cheng Kung University. After serving two years in the military, he entered graduate school at MIT in 1958. After serving as a teaching assistant, he decided to pursue a career in education. Remarkable for the time, his Master’s thesis was on computer-aided instruction.

He decided to pursue a more mathematical path for his PhD, which involved the structure of finite state machines. After completion, he joined the MIT faculty, working on Project MAC. He later became interested in computational complexity issues and found that integrated circuit design was a practical application for that work. He published his first Design Automation Conference paper in 1982 on PLA folding. By this time he had moved to the University of Illinois, where he was a professor in Computer Science from 1972-1998. He was also Associate Provost of the university from 1995-1998

In 1998 Prof. Liu was offered the job of President at National Tsing Hua University, which he accepted. He held that position until 2002. He has continued his research and even hosts a radio program in Taiwan, where he discusses a number of topics of personal interest.

Date

2014-06-02

Participants

Fairbairn, Doug, Interviewer
Fortier, James, Videographer
Liu, David (C .L.), Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Duration

1:22:15

Format

MOV

Copyright Holder

Computer History Museum

Category

Oral history

Subject

semiconductor history; Tsing Hua University; Computational complexity; VLSI design automation

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X7178.2014
 

Related Records

102739932 Liu, David (C.L.) oral history