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Zheng Liu

Zheng Liu

Assistant Professor

Zheng Liu received his B.S. in Electronics from Peking University, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA, and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Princeton University. He previously served as a Senior Design Engineer at Skyworks Solutions, where his RF power amplifier and front-end module designs enabled the shipment of over 40 million units in commercial wireless devices. He later collaborated with Apple on advanced mmWave beamforming ICs and conducted research at Texas Instruments’ Kilby Labs, developing GaN power amplifier modules for emerging 6G wireless systems.

Dr. Liu’s research interests span AI-enabled wireless chip design, ultra-broadband phased-array systems, and RF/mmWave/sub-THz circuits using advanced semiconductor technologies. His work integrates data- and physics-informed optimization for on-chip electromagnetics and high-speed devices, the development of universal phased-array architectures for joint communication–sensing, and the design of high-performance MMIC/RFIC solutions leveraging beyond-silicon platforms such as GaN and InP.

His contributions to microwave engineering and solid-state circuits have earned several prestigious honors, including the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits Best Paper Award (2023), the IMS Advanced Practice Paper Award (2022), the IEEE MTT-S Microwave Fellowship (2021), and the Bede Liu Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award from Princeton University (2023). He also received three IEEE IMS Best Student Paper Awards.
Dr. Liu is a member of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee on Microwave and mmWave Integrated Circuits (TC-14), serves on the Technical Program Committee for IEEE IMS 2025 and IMS 2026, and reviews regularly for premier journals such as IEEE JSSC, TMTT, and TCAS-I.

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Contact

Engineering Hall
1415 Engineering Dr
Madison, WI

  • PhD 2023, Princeton University
  • MS 2015, University of California, Los Angeles
  • BA 2013, Peking University
  • BS 2013, Peking University

  • RF/mmWave/THz integrated circuits and chip-scale system
  • AI/ML-enabled wireless chip design
  • Beyond-silicon MMIC/RFIC and heterogeneous integration
  • Joint communication and sensing

  • 2025 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, 2023 JSSC Best Paper Award (1 per year)
  • 2023 Princeton University, Bede Liu Best Ph.D Dissertation Award (1 annually in ECE)
  • 2022 IEEE IMS 2022, Advanced Practice Paper Award (1st Author, Top 1/325)
  • 2022 Qualcomm, Inc, Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Finalist
  • 2022 Analog Devices, Inc, ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award
  • 2022 IEEE, IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship (10 awardees globally per year)
  • 2021 Princeton University, Yan Huo 94* Graduate Fellowship
  • 2021 IEEE IMS 2021, Best Student Paper Awards (Two papers, Both 1st Author, Top 6/314)
  • 2020 IEEE IMS 2020, Best Student Paper Award (Top 3/317)
  • 2017 Skyworks Solutions, Inc, Excellent Performance Award

  • Zhou, J., Karahan, E. A., Ghozzy, S., Liu, Z., Jalili, H., & Sengupta, K. (2025). 25.3 AI-Enabled Design Space Discovery and End-to-End Synthesis for RFICs with Reinforcement Learning and Inverse Methods Demonstrating mm-Wave/sub-THz PAs Between 30 and 120GHz. In 2025 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) (p. 1-3).
  • Sengupta, K., Karahan, E. A., Zhou, J., & Liu, Z. (2025). AI-enabled RF-to-THz IC Design Space Discovery and Inverse Design Flow. In 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) (p. 1-4).
  • Huang, X., Liu, Z., Karahan, E. A., & Sengupta, K. (2025). Synthesized Design of Millimeter-Wave Low-Loss Wideband Bandpass Filter and Filtering Impedance Transformer in 90-nm (Bi)-CMOS Technology. IEEE Journal of Microwaves.
  • Ghozzy, S., Allam, M., Karahan, E. A., Liu, Z., & Sengupta, K. (2024). 12.2 A mm-Wave/Sub-THz Synthesizer-Free Coherent Receiver with Phase Reconstruction Through Mixed-Signal Kramer-Kronig Processing. In 2024 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) (p. 220-222).
  • Huang, X., Liu, Z., Karahan, E. A., & Sengupta, K. (2024). A Millimeter-Wave Low-Loss On-Chip Filter Design Using a Wideband Synthesis Method in 90-nm SiGe BiCMOS Process. In 2024 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium-IMS 2024 (p. 753-756).
  • Karahan, E. A., Zhou, J., Liu, Z., Shao, Z., Fisher, S., & Sengupta, K. (2024). Deep Learning Enabled Design of RF/mmWave IC and Antennas. In 2024 IEEE 67th International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS) (p. 769-772).
  • Karahan, E. A., Liu, Z., & Sengupta, K. (2024). Ims deep learning enabled generalized synthesis of multi-port electromagnetic structures and circuits for mmwave power amplifiers. In 2024 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium-IMS 2024 (p. 184-187).
  • Lambrechts, J. W., Sinha, S., Sengupta, K., Bimana, A., Kadam, S., Bhandari, S., Du Preez, J., Shao, Z., Huang, X., Liu, Z., & others, (2024). Intelligent integrated circuits and systems for 5G/6G telecommunications. IEEE Access, 12, 21402-21419.
  • Liu, Z., Karahan, E. A., & Sengupta, K. (2023). A 30-88 GHz Phase Shifter with Broadband 90° Hybrid-Marchand Balun Network and Common-base Buffer Achieving 1.34-3.1° RMS Phase Error in 90 nm SiGe. In 2023 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium-IMS 2023 (p. 1156-1159).
  • Liu, Z., Karahan, E. A., & Sengupta, K. (2023). Ultra Broadband Phased-Array Transmitter with Low Phase Error of 1.24-2.8° across 36-91 GHz Supporting 10.8 Gbps 64QAM in 90 nm SiGe. In ESSCIRC 2023-IEEE 49th European Solid State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) (p. 497-500).