“The Centre’s success can be attributed to two main reasons,” says Bashir. “1) having talented and committed people associated with it, and 2) striking the right balance between the academic and industrial relevance of the research problems that we addressed. I am grateful to Dr David Flynn, Arm Fellow, and past Co-Director of the Centre, for his unwavering technical and logistic support over the past 11 years. I look forward to continuing my contribution to the Centre, and working with my Arm and Southampton Colleagues, as a visiting professor in ECS.”

Under Bashir’s leadership, the Centre has had a long string of successes, fabricating 13 new test chips, releasing four open source tools, co-authoring 28 conference and journal papers, co-supervising 7 PhD students to completion, and undertaking 26 internships in Cambridge. The Centre was also recognised with a University Research Group of the Year award from Techworks (formerly the National Microelectronics Institute) in 2015, and was a runner-up for the TechWorks “Research Collaboration of the Year” award in 2018. The Centre has become one of Arm’s largest university research collaborations in the UK and contributed to Bashir’s recognition in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2018, awarded for his services to engineering and industry.

Professor Geoff Merrett replaces Bashir as Co-Director of the Centre, and will work alongside Simon Craske (Arm Fellow and Lead Embedded Architecture) in taking the Centre forward.

“I’m delighted to inherit such a successful collaborative research centre, and personally thank Bashir for everything that he’s done” commented Geoff. “It’s been my pleasure to work alongside him and with colleagues from Arm, and I look forward to working with Simon to grow the Centre and ensure that it continues to produce excellent and relevant research collaborations. I look forward to the next decade of Arm-ECS achievements!”

Dr Alex Weddell takes over from Geoff as the Centre’s Technical Manager.