Proceedings of the 25th edition on Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI

Welcome to the 25th edition of the Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI (GLSVLSI) 2015 held at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. GLSVLSI is a premier venue for the dissemination of manuscripts of the highest quality in all areas related to VLSI, devices, and system-level design. The venue of this year's GLSVLSI is Pittsburgh, which continues GLSVLSI's meetings near noted bodies of water. Pittsburgh is the famous confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers to form the Ohio River. The Ohio River links with the Mississippi River to reach the Gulf of Mexico, and while not a "great lake", it is a great body of water. Pittsburgh is one of the US oldest cities due to its water passages and also boasts a wonderful geography rich with hiking, water sports, skiing, and many other outdoor activities. You will also find a rich cultural heritage here due to great gifts by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and cultural treasures like Stephen Foster and Andy Warhol as well as a world class symphony orchestra, museums of art and natural history, and the U.S. National Aviary. We truly believe that Pittsburgh is a great location for a symposium on VLSI 2015 and you will enjoy the beautiful city as well as the program over the three days of this year's GLSVLSI activity. This year, GLSVLSI is co-located with the IEEE Computer Society Microelectronics Systems Education (MSE) conference. This brings another facet to the scope of the GLSVLSI meeting to include pedagogical innovations as well as research innovations in the area of VLSI and microsystems. Your full conference registration will entitle you to attend sessions at either GLSVLSI or MSE as your interests dictate. Moreover, this year's special theme for GLSVLSI is related to Biology and the cross overs between VLSI, CAD, and Biology. To support this theme, we have included several keynote talks from recognized experts in both biology and computing technologies. On Wednesday we will open the symposium with Krishnendu Chakrabarty, William H. Younger Distinguished Professor at Duke University who will speak about Digital Microfluidic Biochips. On Thursday, Lynn H. Matthias Professor Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma will talk about his work in bio-neural graphene sensors for in vivo imaging and optogenetics. Finally, Friday's keynote will host Dr. Andrew Schwartz, Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, who will discuss recent advances in brain-controlled prosthetics for paralysis. Additionally, we have four terrific special sessions including sessions on BioEDA and Neuromorphic Computing that supplement our special theme. The speakers of each special session are internationally renowned experts and they will discuss the state-of-the-art progress in these emerging domains from multidisciplinary perspectives. As for the technical meeting, GLSVLSI 2015 was a resounding success: 148 papers were submitted, including authors from 34 different countries, of which 41 papers were accepted as full papers for oral presentation at the symposium (with a 28% acceptance rate). Including poster papers, a total of 60 papers will be included in the symposium and published in the symposium proceedings. Of the authors of these papers in the program, 48% are from North America, 23% from Asia, 23% from Europe, 2.5% from Africa, 2.5% from South America, and 1% from Australia. The final technical program consists of 21 long presentations and 20 short presentations in 11 oral sessions and 19 posters in two poster sessions. Special sessions add another 14 exciting papers to the proceedings of the symposium. GLSVLSI 2015 starts on Wednesday, May 20th 2015, with an exciting line up of speakers on a broad range of issues including resiliency and robustness, new methods in CAD and circuits, interconnects and network-on-chips, and energy efficient systems. On the second day, in addition to continuing the discussion on resiliency and robustness, CAD, and VLSI design challenges, we have a session focused on emerging technologies and post-CMOS VLSI. On the third day, we have dedicated a session to power and temperature-aware design, accompanying the CAD and circuits tracks. The technical program of GLSVLSI 2015 includes two parallel tracks to allow longer presentations and discussions during the three days of the symposium. Concurrently, MSE will offer a third parallel section. Overall, there are 10 regular sessions, 4 special sessions, and 2 poster sessions in the technical program and a session on the first day of the symposium where the "best paper award" candidates will have the opportunity to present their outstanding work. The social program of GLSVLSI 2015 includes two special events this year. The first event consists on a reception cocktail on Tuesday evening sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh. Then, on Wednesday, May 20th a joint GLSVLSI/MSE Gala will be held at the Marriott with evening speaker Erik Brunvand, Professor at the University of Utah, speaking about the "art" of VLSI.