In the afternoon of February 22, 2016, winner of the 1988 Turing Award Prof. Ivan Sutherland and his wife Prof. Marly Roncken visited the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and gave a lecture titled “Understanding Self-timed Circuits” to teachers and students of SEIEE. The lecture was divided into two sessions. The first session was held in the afternoon of Feb.22 and hosted by Prof. Xiaoyao Liang; and the second session was held in the morning of Feb. 23 and hosted by Prof. Xinbing Wang. About 200 students attended the lecture.

In the lecture, Prof. Sutherland and Prof. Roncken introduced the concept of self-timed system and how to design, verify and test such a system.

Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. And he is widely regarded as the "father of computer graphics." He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces". (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Sutherland)