Varun Khemani, Jaime Campos advance to QIF finalists stage

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Congratulations to CALCE/ENRE PhD student Varun Khemani (advised by Dr. Michael Azarian and Prof. Michael Pecht) and ISR/ECE PhD student Jaime Campos (advised by Prof. Pamela Abshire). Their submission, “Reliability-Aware Circuit Design for Self-Diagnosis and Self-Prognosis in Deep Submicron Technologies” was selected to advance to the final phase of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (QIF) (North America) 2019. They presented their proposal at Qualcomm headquarters in San Diego on April 3rd and are awaiting the results of the final selection process!  


The QIF program is focused on recognizing, rewarding, and mentoring innovative PhD students across a broad range of technical research areas, based on Qualcomm’s core values of innovation, execution and teamwork. QIF enables graduate students to be mentored by our engineers and supports them in their quest towards achieving their research goals.

The program has experienced continued growth with over 100 proposals submitted each year in the US and international combined and has awarded over $5 million dollars since it started in 2009 at Qualcomm’s Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. Students are required to apply as a team of 2 PhD students on the following research areas:

  • Advanced Semiconductor Electronics
  • Advances in Communication Techniques and Theory
  • Autonomous Driving
  • Machine Learning
  • Multimedia Computing
  • Processor Architecture and Implementation
  • Secure System Design
  • Semiconductor Test, Quality and Yield Learning

The QIF program is open to students from a preselected variety of top US based and international schools. 110 abstracts were submitted for QIF 2019. After an initial review process, 50 of them were selected to submit a detailed proposal. This included 4 teams from the University of Maryland, including Varun and Jaime. Upon a further review process, 37 finalists were selected and flown to Quacomm Headquarters in San Diego to present their proposal.

Varun and Jaime's team was the only University of Maryland team selected as finalists. The tow participated in presentation and poster session and a tour of Qualcomm's testing facilities. They are awaiting the final results of the selection process.

Varun also received an award at the Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Honors and Awards Ceremony for this accomplishment. 

Published April 26, 2019