Draft:Alex Yakovlev

Alex Yakovlev (Алекса́ндр Влади́мирович Я́ковлев) (born 9 April 1956) is a Russian-British computer scientist, hardware engineer, and Full Professor of Computer System Design in the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a Head of MicroSystems Research Group at this department. After completing his PhD in Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute in 1982, he spent 1984-85 doing post-doc research in Newcastle and in 1991 started a tenured academic career there. He leads research into asynchronous circuits, low-power electronics and machine learning. .

Education
In 1973 Yakovlev finished High school №38 in Soviet Leningrad. It was and still (2024) is, one of the known schools with emphasis in mathematics and physics. His grades were 75% "excellent" and 25% "good". Then he passed the entrance exams to the Faculty of Computer Engineering of Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (Ленинградский Электротехнический Институт, now Saint-Petersburg Electrotechnical University). The undergraduate study for engineers in the Soviet Union lasted 5 and a half years, so Yakovlev obtained his degree (with distinction) in 1979. The students then had a number of "practices", at the department, and in the 5-th year, at some plant. In addition, students had to pass the State Examination and did diploma project. So, obtaining such a Diplom-Ingenieur degree is equivalent to Master's degree study. Yakovlev’s diploma project called "Software Design for Microprocessor-based Logical Control" and has been done under the guidance of Professor Yuri Sidorov. In his fifth year he won the all-Leningrad Olympiad in Computer Science, and was a delegate in the congress of winners of academic Olympiads held in Moscow in 1979. In 1979 Yakovlev passed, at the LETI department "Mathematical Support for Computers" (Математическое обеспечение ЭВМ), the entrance exams to "Aspirantura", an equivalent of PhD study. Among these exams was one on the chosen research topic, but first it was necessary to find an advisor. Yakovlev really wanted to get into the group headed by Professor Varshavsky. However, it was not easy, first you had to show your skills to one of the group members. This member was Associate Professor (доцент) Leonid Rosenblum, who became Yakovlev's mentor for many years. In 1982 Yakovlev defended his PhD dissertation . The dissertation defense in the USSR meant the degree Candidate of Sciences (кандидат наук), and automatically gave a supplement to salary. For this reason, every PhD student had to defend before the opponents assigned by the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK). In 2006, being a full professor at the Newcastle University (UK), Yakovlev wrote DSc thesis based on the collection of his works.

Career and research
In 1982 Yakovlev became an assistant professor (старший преподаватель) of the department "Mathematical Support for Computers" at LETI. In 1984-85 he was on leave from LETI to Postdoctoral research fellowship in Computing Laboratory at University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Upon return, he continued to work at the same position till 1987. In 1988 he has been promoted to the position of associate professor (доцент) and Deputy Head of the same department and worked there till 1990. In October 1990 he emigrated from the USSR and started to work as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Studies of University of Glamorgan (now University of South Wales). In 1991 he got the position of lecturer at the Department of Computing Science of University of Newcastle upon Tyne and worked at this position till 1997. Yakovlev has formed an Asynchronous Systems Laboratory at Newcastle, which includes fifteen members (lecturers, RAs and PhDs) and has close links with industry (Intel, BAe Dynamics, Theseus Logic, Cogency Technology, Acorn Networks, Atmel, Dialog Semiconductor and other companies).

In the period 1982-2006 that is between the PhD and DSc, Yakovlev's y research work has been focused on proving the advantages of asynchronous design techniques for constructing VLSI systems. In particular, he demonstrated the crucial role of formal models of concurrency, such as Petri nets, in designing asynchronous systems that are reliable (free from hazards) and efficient (in terms of speed, power consumption and size). These 24 years of research have led to significant results.

He has contributed to the forming of several UK and international academic partnerships with support from EPSRC, BC, Leverhulme grants and EU ACiD-WG. His "Petrify team" (Jordi Cortadella, Michael Kishinevsky, Alex Kondratyev, Luciano Lavagno and Alex Yakovlev) was most productive and supported by Intel, joint EPSRC projects with Bristol University and with King's College London, uncled by Bae Dynamics. Yakovlev has assisted to forming an asynchronous design team at Intel Corp. that performed work on asynchronous instruction decoder RAPPID (1996-99). Later he has formed a EU consortium (GENESIS) to develop generic methods and algorithms for synthesis of distributed, concurrent and asynchronous systems. Yakovlev chaired and co-chaired several of ASYNC symposia and organized a number of workshops and conferences on Petri nets. He co-founded and chaired the Steering Committee of the ACSD (Application of Concurrency to System Design) conference from 2001 to 2018. He also served on the Steering committee of PATMOS and was its general chair in 2012. Together with Professor Steve Furber he co-founded and led the UK Asynchronous forum from 1997 to 2012. He gave invited lectures on using Petri nets in hardware design and asynchronous design, in a number of universities and companies worldwide (e.g., Helsinki TU, TU of Denmark, IMEC Leuven, Manchester Univ., Univ. Birmingham, Univ Bristol, Univ. Augsburg, BTU Cottbus, HP Research Labs, Acorn Networks, Dialog, Analog Devices, Nordic Semiconductor).

As of 2024, the full list of Yakovlev's publications includes more than 500 items. Among them, 135 papers published in refereed journals, and 300 presented at peer-reviewed conferences. 17 of his conference papers got the best paper award. Yakovlev co-edited seven and co-authored two monographs. He is a co-author of six patents. As of 2024, under Yakovlev’s guidance 76 PhD students defended their dissertations

Awards and honours
In 1985 Yakovlev was made Pioneer of Futurebus (IEEE 896 Standard). In the period between 1992-2004, Yakovlev was Newcastle’s representative of the European Working Group on Asynchronous Circuit Design (ACiD-WG). In 2012-13 he was awarded to be a Dream Fellow of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) , where he pioneered research on energy-modulated computing. He was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in 2015. In the same year he was registered as a Chartered Engineer (CEng). A year later, in 2016, Yakovlev was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and in 2017 - a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (REng). In 2018, he was awarded an IET Achievement Medal for contributions to electronic engineering.

Scientific genealogy
The genealogy presumes that a scientist leaves at least one scientist of comparable scale after himself. Such a chain can be short or even break due to various circumstances. The mentor and close friend of Yakovlev, Leonid (Leka) Rosenblum (1936-2019) unfortunately, was not able to continue his scientific carrier, as he would like. An opposite occurred to another scientist from the previous generation, Vyacheslav (Slava) Marakhovsky (1940-). He continued his carrier in Japan, at the University of Aizu. Both influenced Yakovlev a lot and were in the group of Yakovlev’s academic supervisor - Victor Varshavsky. A significant impact on Yakovlev’s research and leadership skills was from his Newcastle’s mentor Professor David Kinniment (1940-2012), who was the widely recognized pioneer of metastability and synchronization studies and founder of the Microelectronics Design research group in Newcastle in 1979. The genealogy below demonstrates that the age difference between the “youngest” and the “oldest” professor in the four generations was then merely 30 years.
 * Victor Varshavsky (1933-2005), professor of computer science in Leningrad
 * Michael Tsetlin (1924-1966), professor of mathematics and physics in Moscow
 * Israel Gelfand (1913-2009), professor of mathematics in Moscow
 * Andrey Kolmogorov (1903-1987), professor of mathematics in Moscow