Are you a master's student, a PhD student, or a Postdoc in the early stages of your career? Are you a Professor or a Company looking for talented young researchers? DATE 2025 is looking out for you!

Born during the DATE 2019 edition, the Young People Programme created a unique opportunity for discussion on career development, and for creating connections between young DATE 2025 attendees and sponsoring companies. So, whether you are looking for a job or for someone to work with, mark the Young People Programme on your agenda!

To know more:

• If you are a student (master’s, PhD students) or Postdoc, please look here.
• If you are a Company looking for young talents, look at here.
• If you are aiming to sponsor your activities and attracting young researchers to your group, please look here.

DATE 2025 Young People Programme - Students

Are you a master's student, a PhD student, or a Postdoc in the early stages of your career? DATE 2025 is looking out for you!

The DATE 2025 Young People Programme features several events for young researchers to help you showcase your skills and find your path in either the academic or the industry scenario. To this end, YPP offers you the following activities:

• A Panel on Future Career Perspectives that explores different career paths, whether in industry, academia, or research centres (further explored in the following events)
• Student Team Presentations, where master’s students present their activities in international competitions like RoboCup and Formula Student
• A University Fair for Universities to present mature academic work to a large audience of industrial parties and students
• A Career Fair focusing on University Career Paths, where academic open positions are presented to a large audience
• A Career Fair focusing on Industry Career Paths, including the presentation of the sponsoring companies and speed dating with HRs
• A PhD Forum for PhD students to showcase their research and to get meaningful feedback both from academy experts and industry personnel

Students and young researchers can also request sponsorship for DATE 2025 registration and travel under the rules defined below.

For more information, please contact yppdate-conference [dot] com.

DATE 2025 Registration Sponsorship

The DATE 2025 YPP students may apply for free student registration to DATE 2025. Such grants are funded by the participating companies and by IEEE CEDA.

Requirements for sponsorship and process

Applicants must be full-time students in EDA, microelectronics, or an adjacent field. If accepted, you must commit to actively participating in the programme in Lyon, France 31 March - 2 April 2025. Participation includes attending YPP events, especially industry and academic careers fairs as well as DATE 2025 sessions. We welcome students from all over Europe and from all backgrounds.

A jury will carefully review the applications and select DATE 2025 YPP participants. We especially welcome applications from women and underrepresented groups.

If your application is accepted, you will receive a personalised registration link from the conference organisation. If you are not selected, you may register via the online registration form. Sponsorship applicants accept that their information will be shared with the sponsoring companies.

To apply for free registration, please go to the online application form. Application closes on Friday, 31 January 2025 AoE Sunday, 09 February 2025 AoE.

DATE 2025 Travel Sponsorship

A limited number of travel grants are available and restricted only to PhD students or Postdocs accepted by the PhD Forum. Applications for a travel grant should be sent by email to ypp-phddate-conference [dot] com (ypp-phd[at]date-conference[dot]com) and should contain the general information (as above) as well as a motivation for requesting the travel grant.

The submission of travel grant requests is now closed.

Panel on Future Career Perspectives

This panel discusses various career paths to help young researchers get a clearer idea about possibilities, necessary skills, and typical job profiles either in the academic world or in the industry. The panel hosts people working in academia or research centres, startup founders, and people working in industry with different job profiles (e.g., marketing, technical experts, team leaders). The goal is to encourage discussion and questions from the audience to delve into the characteristics of the different paths.

Participation is open to all DATE 2025 attendees and does not require a preliminary registration.

Student Teams Presentations

The Student Teams Presentations aims at bringing together University Student Teams involved in international competitions and personnel from EDA and microelectronic companies. The Teams can present their activities, success stories and challenges, and to receive funding and support by the companies for their future activities.

Submissions must be done by Friday, 31 January 2025 AoE via the DATE submission website at https://softconf.com/date25/student-teams-fair/, and must include:

• name of the team
• target competitions (e.g., RoboCup, Formula Student)
• team members (in order from the most likely to attend DATE, not more than 5 team members will be sponsored)
• success stories and results at the latest competitions
• challenges and opportunities for cooperation with the sponsoring companies.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: Friday, 31 January 2025 AoE
• Notification of acceptance: TBD
• Presentation at DATE 2025: Monday, 31 March 2025

For more information, please contact ypp-industrydate-conference [dot] com (ypp-industry[at]date-conference[dot]com)

University Fair

University fair (formerly known as University Booth) is a platform for disseminating mature academic research activities, particularly demonstrations and prototypes that are ready for transfer to other units in academia or industry.

For more information, please contact ypp-academiadate-conference [dot] com (ypp-academia[at]date-conference[dot]com)

Career Fair - Academia

PhD students, master students and early researchers can discover new and upcoming academic research initiatives and open positions for PhD/Postdoc (and more). Open positions are also advertised on a "Jobs Wall".

For more information, please contact ypp-academiadate-conference [dot] com (ypp-academia[at]date-conference[dot]com)

Career Fair - Industry

PhD students, master students and early researchers can discover the latest trends, the work environment and culture, and the open job positions in the companies sponsoring DATE, to enlarge their network and find job opportunities! The Career Fair (Industry) features two main moments:

• A Company Presentation Session, during which sponsoring companies present themselves and are open to questions on their ongoing activities and their workplace
• A Speed Dating Session, during which students and early researchers can talk to HRs from the companies to ask questions, leave a CV or plan interviews and future contact

For more information, please contact ypp-industrydate-conference [dot] com (ypp-industry[at]date-conference[dot]com).

PhD Forum

The PhD Forum is a poster session hosted by the European Design Automation Association (EDAA), the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA), and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA).

The forum is a great opportunity for PhD students who have completed their PhD thesis within the last 12 months or who are close to complete their thesis to present their work to a broad audience in the system design and design automation community from both industry and academia. The forum may also help students to establish contacts for entering the job market. In addition, representatives from industry and academia get a glance of state-of-the-art in system design and design automation.

Eligibility

The following two classes of students are eligible:

• Students who have finished their PhD thesis within the last 12 months
• Students who are close to completing their PhD thesis work.

Benefits

• Opportunity to present your work, to a large audience with a poster presentation during the PhD Forum
• Eligibility to win the PhD Forum Award
• Direct access to professionals from industry and academia

Submission:

Submissions need to contain:

• Full contact address with affiliation, phone, e-mail
• An extended abstract describing the novelties and advantages of the thesis work. Such an extended abstract must be limited to two pages (excluding references). The abstract should also include name and affiliation, along with the name of the advisor. A template for submissions can be found at the following link: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/date-phd-forum-template/qgwjbc….
• Either (a) university-approved thesis proposal (PDF) or (b) one published paper (PDF)
• The submission requires creating a single PDF file that should contain both the extended abstract and the University-approved thesis proposal/published paper.

Submit this material to the DATE 2025 online submission system at https://softconf.com/date25/phdforum/.

Download the DATE 2025 PhD Forum Call for Submissions here.

Final version submission guidelines:

Authors should prepare and submit through the SoftConf portal (https://softconf.com/date25/conference):

• a final version of the extended abstract (two pages plus one additional page of references – no thesis/publication should be included) by using the following https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/date-phd-forum-template/qgwjbc… - deadline: Friday, 21 February 2025 AoE
• a poster to be presented at the conference (suggested format is A0, portrait) - deadline: Friday, 14 March 2025 AoE. Note that it is the responsibility of the authors to print and bring the posters to the event.

Note that, for PhD forum presenters, a pre-recorded video is not required.

Important dates:

• Submission deadline: Sunday, 01 December 2024 AoE Thursday, 05 December 2024 AoE
• Notification of acceptance: Friday, 10 January 2025 AoE
• Presentation at DATE 2025: Monday, 31 March 2025
• Final version submission deadline: Friday, 21 February 2025 AoE
• Poster submission deadline: Friday, 14 March 2025 AoE

For more information on each programme, please contact:

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HACK@DATE – HackTheSilicon: The World's Largest Hardware Security Challenge

HackTheSilicon is a premier global hardware security competition co-located with leading conferences such as DAC, USENIX, and CHES. As hardware and firmware become increasingly central to our digital infrastructure, so do the risks associated with their vulnerabilities. Security-critical flaws in hardware can lead to severe consequences, from data breaches to system compromises, threatening entire computing platforms with implications even for national security. To address these challenges, the brightest minds in academia and industry must collaborate to identify and mitigate these risks.

Organized by a consortium of industry and academic leaders—including Intel, Synopsys, the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany), and Texas A&M University (USA)—this challenge is a cutting-edge platform for testing and advancing hardware security techniques. Since its inception in 2018, HackTheSilicon has attracted hundreds of participants from around the globe, fostering innovation and collaboration in the field. This year, HackTheSilicon expanded to the Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference with HACK@DATE, further solidifying its reputation as a leading hardware security challenge. The competition continues to promote innovation, encourage collaboration, and bridge the gap between academia and industry.

The competition replicates real-world scenarios where security engineers identify vulnerabilities in a given design. Contestants compete to:

• Discover security vulnerabilities.
• Implement exploits demonstrating these weaknesses.
• Propose mitigation strategies or patches.
• Report findings with comprehensive documentation.

The open-source SoC used in the competition, riddled with security flaws, has been co-developed by Intel, TU Darmstadt, and Texas A&M. Vulnerabilities span a wide range of scenarios, from data corruption to sensitive information leakage, providing participants with a diverse and realistic challenge.

Who Can Take on the Challenge?

HACK@DATE is open to teams from industry, academia, or hybrid collaborations. Participants will receive an altered OpenTitan SoC design riddled with planted security vulnerabilities. Your mission:

• Identify vulnerabilities in the design.
• Assess their impact on the system.
• Develop exploits to demonstrate their severity.
• Propose robust mitigations to address the issues.

Teams are free to use any tools or techniques and must submit a detailed report on their findings. Submissions will be evaluated based on the number and severity of discovered vulnerabilities, exploit sophistication, and the quality of the mitigation proposals, including automation methods and tools.

Two Phases, One Goal

The competition unfolds in two phases:

1. Phase 1: Teams analyze the provided SoC design and submit their findings.
2. Phase 2: Only the top-performing teams from Phase 1 will advance to the showdown during DATE 2025, where the best will compete for the top honors.

Why Participate?

This is your chance to:

• Push the boundaries of hardware security innovation.
• Collaborate with global experts in industry and academia.
• Solve real-world security challenges with high stakes.
• Showcase your expertise on an international stage.

Are you ready to outsmart the vulnerabilities and make your mark in the world of hardware security? Join HACK@DATE and prove it!

Honoring the Innovators

The winners of this year’s challenge will be recognized during the prestigious DATE award ceremony, celebrating their contributions to advancing the field of hardware security.

For more information, please go to the HACK@DATE webpage or contact:

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SoC Labs: The academic community for System On Chip development

This workshop focuses on how the academic community can simplify SoC design in an ARM-based ecosystem. Our community-based projects range from microcontroller based designs undertaken by PhD or Masters students to complex A class processor systems developed by research teams. The workshop aims to combine presentations by individual project teams from around the world with practical skills training on how you too can take a SoC design from concept to tape out.

The workshop will start with the presentation of SoC Labs and projects, selected from the participants of the "Understanding our world" research and education design contest. We will present actual silicon devices and results from academic projects using a low cost ASIC fabrication path and verification board based on the community's reusable nanoSoC reference design. The workshop will then have an education section on how to structure a SoC design project, the range of SoC reference designs from simple microcontroller to complex Linux based systems and advanced techniques such as the use of 'Chiplets'. The aim of the workshop is to enable the development of more academic SoC design projects and make it more accessible for individuals and organizations who may have no prior experience, especially in ASIC fabrication. Finally, SoC Labs will announce a new SoC design contest for the coming year along with details of support from initial design to final tape out.

For more information, please contact:

John Darlington jdecs [dot] soton [dot] ac [dot] uk (jd[at]ecs[dot]soton[dot]ac[dot]uk)
Becky Ellis Becky [dot] Ellisarm [dot] com (Becky[dot]Ellis[at]arm[dot]com)

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DATE 2025 Young People Programme - Universities

Are you a University or a Research Center looking for students, graduates, early researchers, and PhD to join your research? Do you wish to promote your novel research and your recent advancements to colleagues and companies, and to do effective networking? The DATE 2025 Young People Programme can help you!

The DATE 2025's Young People Programme features a number of events, including:

• A Career Fair focusing on University Career Paths, where academic open positions are presented to a large audience
• A University Fair for Universities to present mature academic work to a large audience of industrial parties and of students

Career Fair - Academia

The Career Fair – Academia is a channel to prepare for the future of academic career for younger academic enthusiasts and advertise new and upcoming research initiatives with academic open positions to a large audience for established academics.

Interested established academics are invited to submit a 1-page abstract description of their new research plans and the respective open position(s). Accepted submissions will have the opportunity to present their research openings. They are also invited to post a flyer of their opening(s) on the “Jobs Wall”, where PhD students, master students and early researchers can discover new and upcoming academic research initiatives and open positions.

For further info please contact:

Submit this material to the DATE 2025 online submission system at https://softconf.com/date25/career-fair-university/.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: Friday, 31 January 2025 AoE Monday, 24 March 2025 AoE
• Notification of acceptance: TBD
• Presentation at DATE 2025: Monday, 31 March 2025

University Fair

University fair (formerly known as University Booth) is a channel to foster the transfer of mature academic work to a large audience. Interested research academics are invited to submit a 1-page abstract description of their precommercial research results and prototypes. Accepted submissions will have the opportunity to present their work and demonstrate their prototype live during demonstration sessions.

Submit this material to the DATE 2025 online submission system at https://softconf.com/date25/university-fair/.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: Friday, 31 January 2025 AoE Friday, 28 February 2025 AoE
• Notification of acceptance: TBD
• Presentation at DATE 2025: Monday, 31 March 2025

For more information please contact:

DATE 2025 Young People Programme - Companies

Are you a Company looking for students, graduates, early researchers, and PhD to join your company? The DATE 2025 Young People Program can help you!

The DATE 2025's Young People Programme features several events for young researchers and students to connect with companies and showcase their skills. Activities included in the YPP are:

• A Company Presentation Session, during which sponsoring companies present themselves and are open to questions about their ongoing activities, and their workplace.
• A Speed Dating Session, during which students and early researchers can talk to company HRs to ask questions, leave a CV, or plan interviews and/or future contact.
• A Panel on Future Career Perspectives, in which selected company representatives can share their career path in industry.
• And many more Career Networking Activities, in which master’s graduates, early researchers, and PhD students present their current academic work, connect with industry and academia, and discover open job positions in industry.

Your participation in 5 stages:

Before DATE 2025

• Companies preregister for DATE 2025. After successful preregistration, they can upload a description and a five-minute promotional video (optional) to the DATE 2025 Young People Programme webpage. We will use this information to promote sponsoring companies on the DATE 2025 website and DATE 2025 LinkedIn and X profiles.
• Young People Programme Chairs forward the student application data to recruiters of sponsoring companies for proactive contact. Student contact information will be sent to recruiters' email address, the data will not be published.

During DATE 2025

• Company Presentation Session, during which participating companies present themselves, their workplace, open jobs, and current activities
• Speed Dating Session after the company presentation, where the recruiters and YPP participants can have quick interviews and exchange CVs and business cards
• Company recruiters can approach students during the conference, including the PhD Forum, the Student Teams Fair, and any other DATE 2025 activity, and schedule interviews with the students. You can also share job openings on the job wall at the venue.

You can preregister for DATE 2025 here. Please be informed that we can only offer a limited number of companies sponsoring opportunities (e.g. seats at Panel on Future Career Perspectives) and available slots will be distributed based on first come first served.

For more information, please contact:

Sponsoring Options

The YPP is looking for Sponsoring Companies. As sponsoring companies, you can exclusively present your company as an attractive workplace for young professionals and directly contact and interact with the sponsored students.

Different levels of sponsorship will be available.

YPP Activities in detail

Company Presentation

This session allows companies to present themselves to a talented pool of future professionals. Presentations may cover the work environment, the newest technologies and challenges, and available career paths.

Main goals:

• Showcase your company’s culture, values and career opportunities.
• Engage with students who may be future employees.
• Increase brand awareness among the younger demographic.
• Share real-world insights and career advice relevant to the students.

Format:

• During the presentation slots, companies are encouraged to focus on what makes their work environment unique and provide insights into career progression and development opportunities for students. Consider sharing the stories of former interns or young employees who gave grown within the company.
• Each company will have 15 minutes on stage. A presentation area with a microphone, projector, and screen will be available.
• Please prepare your presentation and share it with the organization 30 minutes early to test any digital content. Use visuals, videos and testimonials to make your presentation engaging for students.
• The session will close with a 10-minute QA session, where companies will have the chance to answer students' questions.

Speed Dating Session

A Speed Dating Session, during which students and early researchers can talk to HRs from the companies to ask questions, leave a CV or plan interviews and future contact.

This is a networking session designed to connect companies with talented students and young professionals seeking opportunities. It provides a platform for companies to introduce themselves, showcase job opportunities and foster relations with potential hires.

This event is structured as an open networking session, where companies have designated booths and attendees can move freely, engaging with the companies of their choice.

Main Goals:

• Facilitate meaningful conversations between companies and students about career opportunities.
• Allow companies to scout potential talent for internships or full-time positions.
• Offers companies a chance to enhance their employer brand and connect with future professionals early in their career. Company representatives should engage in career-focused conversations with attendees, providing insights into roles that suit candidates and tips for a successful application process. Be prepared to discuss what makes your company a great place to work.
• Engage attendees by asking about their career goals and interests, and then discuss how your company can align with those goals. The companies can also encourage them to submit their CVs at your booth or follow up with the HR teams.

Booth setup:

• Each company booth will include a table and 2 chairs. You are welcome to bring a digital display or banners. If your company requires any special arrangements, please inform the organization team.

Panel on Future Career Perspectives

This panel discusses various career paths, to help young researchers get a clearer idea about possibilities, necessary skills and typical job profiles either in the academic world or in the industry. The panel hosts people working in academia or research centres, startup founders, and people working in industry with different job profiles (e.g., marketing, technical experts, team leaders). The goal is to encourage discussion and questions from the audience, to delve into the characteristics of the different paths. Company representatives at panel will be selected Premium Sponsoring Companies, Participation is open to all DATE 2025 attendees.

Other Career Networking Activities

The Young People at DATE 2025 is an initiative targeting Masters/PhD students and early-stage researchers with the goal of increasing their visibility, establishing contacts, and encouraging discussion about future perspectives in academia and industries.

During the DATE 2025 there are various formats like PhD Forum, Student Teams Fair and University Fair in which Students and your researcher can present their academic work to a larger audience of industrial and academic parties. All those activities feature an in-person presentation via a short frontal presentation, posters or demonstration prototypes and allow close interaction.

Company recruiters from sponsoring companies can approach students during the conference, the PhD Forum, and the Student Teams Fair to connect and future job applications.

In addition, companies can add job openings on the job wall at the venue.

For more information, please contact:

 

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Sponsors

Young People Programme is generously funded by following companies and institutions: