My name is Can Li (Chinese: 李燦), and I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). I also serve as Associate Director of the Centre for Advanced Semiconductors and Integrated Circuits (CASIC) and Programme Director of the BEng in Electronic Engineering.

My research develops analog in-memory computing hardware from post-CMOS emerging devices such as memristors, spanning device fabrication, circuit and architecture design, and algorithm co-design. The work focuses on reliability and fault tolerance of analog computation, emerging non-volatile memory devices, and applications including in-memory search, associative memory, genomic analysis, and combinatorial optimization.

Before joining HKU in 2020, I worked at Hewlett Packard Labs in Palo Alto, California. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and my B.S. and M.S. from Peking University.

Professional Activities

Societies

• Elected Member-at-Large, Board of Governors, IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS), 2026 – present
• Chair, IEEE EDS Ad-hoc Committee on Conference Submission Platform Development, 2023 – present
• Member, IEEE EDS Neuromorphic Technical Committee, 2024 – present
• Member, IEEE EDS Meetings and Conferences Committee, 2024 – present

Conferences

• Executive committee: IEEE EDTM 26
• Conference chairs: Publication Co-Chair of IEEE EDTM 26; Publication Chair and Track Chair (Memory Technology) of IEEE EDTM 25
• TPC member: DAC 22-25, ICCAD 23-25, ASP-DAC 23-25, DATE 24/25, IEEE EDTM 21/22, ICTA 20/21/22/25, …
• Session chairs: EIPBN 18, IEEE ICTA 21, IUMRS 21, ISMC 21/24, IEEE EDTM 22/25, ASP-DAC 23, ACCESS Technology Symposium 23/24, …

Journals

• Guest Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society, 2025
• Editorial Advisory Board of APL Machine Learning
• Guest editor of IOP Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering
  • Focus issue on 3D Circuits for Neuromorphic Computing
  • Focus issue on Open Neuromorphic Simulations
• Guest editor of Frontiers in Electronics
  • Focus topic on Advanced Solid-State Memory Technology and Applications
• Reviewer:
  • Nature, Nature Electronics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Computational Science, Nature Communications, Science Advances, ACS Nano, Nano Letters, etc.

Grant Review

• Reviewer and interview panelist for national and international research funding agencies

Recognition

• Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers, 2025
• Top 1% worldwide by citation by Clarivate Analytics, 2022-2025
• Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award, 2023
• RGC Early Career Awards (HKSAR), 2021
• NSFC Excellent Young Scientists Fund (港澳優青), 2021

Contest

• 1st Prize in National Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest (China), 2008
• 2nd Prize in PKU Programming Contest, 2006
• 1st Prize in Chinese Physics Olympiad, 2004