Skip to main content
slideNumber:
Biography
Education
Courses Taught

Brent E. Nelson joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University as Assistant Professor after receiving his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Utah in 1984. He has held the rank of Professor in the department since 1996. He specializes in teaching digital systems design and CAD tools for electronic design.

His current research interests focus on the development of CAD tools and design techniques to overcome the limitations of commercial offerings. For over a decade, his RapidSmith, Tincr, RapidSmith2, and Maverick projects have provided both FPGA technology researchers and users with the ability to create FPGA-based circuit designs not possible with commercial tools. These have benefited the areas of rapid design prototyping, design-for-reliability, and hardware security. Prof. Nelson's current projects focus on open-source CAD tools and FPGA bitstream security.

Prof. Nelson served as chair of the BYU Electrical and Computer Engineering Department from 1993-1997 and again from 2012-2018. In 2007, he founded the BYU site of the national NSF-funded CHREC Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing (currently known as SHREC) and served as its co-director until 2012.

Prof. Nelson is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM. He is actively involved as a reviewer for various IEEE journals and serves on the program committees for a number of conferences, including High Performance Embedded Computing Workshop (HPEC), Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), Field-Programmable Technology (ICFPT), Applied Reconfigurable Computing (ARC), and FPGA's for Custom Computing Machines (FCCM).

He has served as program co-chair for international conferences on three occasions: FPL 2009 (Prague Czech Republic), ICFPT 2016 (Xi'An China), and ARC 2019 (Darmstadt Germany).

In 2007, he created the Global Leadership Study Abroad within BYU's College of Engineering and Technology, and he regularly takes BYU students to China to study topics in the general area of Globalization, Engineering, and Technology. In
addition, he has accompanied BYU performing groups to China on multiple occasions.

For his most recent sabbatical in 2018, he visited Imperial College in London where he researched FPGA CAD tools and design methods.

Awards and Honors

  • Ira A. Fulton Chair in Globalization , Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology (2012)
  • Audience Choice Award, IEEE - FCCM'2011 (2011) - Paper "HMFlow: Accelerating FPGA Compilation with Hard Macros for Rapid Prototyping" given Audience Choice Award at FCCM'2011 in May 2011.
  • Community Service Award, IEEE - FPL'2011 (2011) - Paper "RapidSmith: Do-It-Yourself CAD Tools for Xilinx FPGAs" given Community Service Award at FPL'2011 in Chania Greece
  • Phi Kappa Phi 2011 Distinguished Faculty Award, BYU Chapter of Phi Kappa Phi (2011)
  • Phi Kappa Phi Annual Outstanding Faculty Award, BYU Phi Kappa Phi (2011)
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Award, Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering & Technology (2004)

PhD - Computer Science

  • University of Utah, 1984

MS - Computer Science

  • University of Utah, 1983

BS - Computer Science

  • University of Utah, 1981

Courses Taught Regularly

  • ECEn 220 - Fundamentals of Digital Systems*
  • EngT 231 - Foundations of Global Leadership*
  • ECEn 320 - Digital System Design
  • ECEn 451 - Introduction to Digital VLSI Circuits
  • ECEn 493 - Globalization, Engineering, and Technology
  • ECEn 620 - Advanced Digital Systems*
  • ECEn 629 - Reconfigurable Computing*

* Recent courses