Home

Portrait of Dilara Caglar at ASPLOS '24

I am an undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University, pursuing a second major in Engineering Design, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, with a focus on computer architecture, embedded systems, and energy efficient computing. My focus spans processing-in-memory, neuromorphic computing, and hardware–algorithm co-design, and I'm passionate about advancing work at the intersection of computer architecture and machine learning.

This past year, I interned with ETH Zürich's SAFARI Research Group under Prof. Onur Mutlu, where I helped design processing-in-memory architectures to accelerate in-DRAM homomorphic encryption, reducing latency and energy for large-scale cryptographic workloads. I am currently working at Carnegie Mellon's NeuroAI Computer Architecture Lab (NCAL), where we are extending the NeuTNN spiking-neural-network architecture toward multimodal recognition, training systems on energy-efficient edge hardware.

Beyond the lab, I love to build. My personal projects and coursework span sensing, computer vision, IoT, and custom PCBs, giving me hands-on experience across the full stack, from circuit design and firmware to simulation and software, and strengthening my fundamentals.

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

Anticipated graduation — May 2028

B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

Additional major: Engineering Design, Innovation & Entrepreneurship (EDIE)

Relevant coursework: Computer Systems, Digital Systems Design, Analog Circuits, Signals & Systems, Data Structures, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Robotics, Computer Architecture, PCB Design.

Research collaborations

SAFARI Research Group

ETH Zürich

Prof. Onur Mutlu · Ismail Emir Yuksel · Mayank Kabra

NeuroAI Computer Architecture Lab (NCAL)

Carnegie Mellon University

Prof. John Shen · Shanmuga Venkatachalam · Liam Carden

Nexus Research Group

Carnegie Mellon University

Tathagata Srimani

Teaching

Intro to Electrical & Computer Engineering

Carnegie Mellon University · August 2025 – December 2025

Teaching Assistant

Guided 200+ students in hardware testing, debugging methodologies, and validation techniques in analog circuit labs.

Leadership & Service

CMU College of Engineering Student Council

Aug 2025 – Present

Secretary

CMU College of Engineering — First Year Advisory Board

Aug 2024 – May 2025

Head of Marketing

Skills

From coursework, research, and project work.

Digital Design & ASIC

  • Verilog / SystemVerilog
  • VHDL
  • RTL Design
  • Logic Synthesis
  • Place-and-Route
  • Static Timing Analysis (STA)
  • DFT
  • RTL-to-GDSII Flow
  • Digital Design Fundamentals
  • Python / TCL Scripting
  • ASIC / SoC Design
  • DRAM / PIM Architecture
  • FPGA Development

Embedded Systems

  • C / C++
  • Embedded C
  • Microcontroller Programming (Arduino / STM32)
  • Debugging (GDB)
  • Real-Time Systems
  • Lab Instrumentation

PCB & Mixed-Signal

  • PCB Design (Altium)
  • Signal Integrity (SI/PI)
  • Controlled Impedance
  • PDN Design
  • Stack-Up Optimization
  • Mixed-Signal / CMOS Circuit Design
  • LTspice

Software & Tools

  • Python
  • C / C++
  • Linux
  • Git
  • PyTorch
  • JAX
  • Java
  • Ramulator 2.0
  • Autodesk Fusion
  • NVIDIA Isaac Sim
  • Valgrind
  • 3D Printing