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Christopher Batten

Professor

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Christopher Batten
Christopher Batten
Graduate Field Affiliations
Computer Science
Electrical and Computer Engineering

Biography

Christopher Batten is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a graduate field member of computer science at Cornell University. He is a member of the Computer Systems Laboratory, which works on hardware and software techniques for improving the cost, performance, programmability, reliability, and energy efficiency of future computer systems. In 2023–2024, he was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley working in the SLICE Lab and a visiting professor at NVIDIA working in the Accelerator & VLSI Research Group. In 2018, he was a visiting scholar at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and a visiting fellow at Clare Hall in Cambridge, UK. Prior to joining Cornell University, he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Batten received an M.Phil. in engineering as a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2000, and received a B.S. in electrical engineering as a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia in 1999.

Research Interests

Batten works at the intersection of computer architecture, electronic design automation, and digital VLSI including projects on parallel programming frameworks, programmable accelerator design, interconnection networks, productive VLSI chip design methodologies, and architectures for future emerging technologies. Building prototype systems is an integral part of his research, as this is one of the best ways to validate assumptions, gain intuition about physical design issues, and provide platforms for future software research.

  • Computer Architecture
  • Computer Systems
  • Computer Engineering
  • Integrated Circuits

Teaching Interests

Digital Logic and Computer Organization, Computer Systems Programming, Computer Architecture, Digital Chip Design

Select Publications

  • Derin Ozturk, Nicholas Cebry, Angela Cui, Hang Gao, Julie Villamil, Farrell Helbling, and Christopher Batten. “EntoBench: A Benchmark Suite and Evaluation Framework for Insect-Scale Robotics.” IEEE Int’l Symp. on Workload Characterization (IISWC), Oct. 2025.

  • Christopher Batten, Nathaniel Pinckney, Mingjie Liu, Haoxing Ren, and Brucek Khailany. “PyHDL-Eval: An LLM Evaluation Framework for Hardware Design Using Python-Embedded DSLs.” 6th ACM/IEEE Int’l Symp. on Machine Learning for CAD (MLCAD), Sep. 2024.

  • Peitian Pan, Shunning Jiang, Yanghui Ou, and Christopher Batten. “Symbolic Elaboration: Checking Generator Properties in Dynamic Hardware Description Languages.” 21st ACM/IEEE Int’l Symp. on Formal Methods and Models for System Design (MEMOCODE), Sep. 2023.

  • Ang Li, Ting-Jung Chang, Fei Gao, Tuan Ta, Georgios Tziantzioulis, Yanghui Ou, Moyang Wang, Jinzheng Tu, Kaifeng Xu, Paul Jackson, August Ning, Grigory Chirkov, Marcelo Orenes-Vera, Shady Agwa, Xiaoyu Yan, Eric Tang, Jonathan Balkind, Christopher Batten, and David Wentzlaff. “CIFER: A Cache-Coherent 12nm 16mm2 SoC with Four 64-bit RISC-V Application Cores, 18 32-bit RISC-V Compute Cores, and a 1541 LUT6/mm2 Synthesizable eFPGA.” IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSCL), 6:229-232, Aug. 2023.

  • Lin Cheng, Max Ruttenberg, Dai Cheol Jung, Dustin Richmond, Michael Taylor, Mark Oskin, and Christopher Batten. “Beyond Static Parallel Loops: Supporting Dynamic Task Parallelism on Manycore Architectures with Software-Managed Scratchpad Memories.” 28th ACM Int’l Conf. on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating System (ASPLOS), Mar. 2023.

Christopher Batten's Google Scholar

Select Awards and Honors

  • Canaan Family Award for Excellence in Academic Advising, Cornell Engineering 2025
  • Best Artifact Award, ACM/IEEE Int'l Symp. on Machine Learning for CAD 2024
  • Kenneth A. Goldman '71 Teaching Award, Cornell Engineering 2023
  • ACM/IEEE Int'l Symp. on Microarchitecture (MICRO) Hall of Fame 2022
  • Michael Tien '72 Excellence in Teaching Award, Cornell Engineering 2017
  • Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University 2016
  • Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award, Cornell Engineering 2015
  • AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research 2015
  • Michael Tien '72 Excellence in Teaching Award, Cornell Engineering 2013, 2017
  • DARPA Young Faculty Award, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 2012
  • NSF Early CAREER Award, National Science Foundation 2012

Education

  • B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Virginia 1999
  • M.P., Engineering, University of Cambridge 2000
  • Ph.D., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010

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