Report on First and Second ACM/IEEE Workshop on Machine Learning for CAD (MLCAD)

Abstract

The first ACM/IEEE Workshop on Machine Learning for CAD (MLCAD) was held on September 2–4, 2020 in Canmore, AB, Canada. The workshop welcomed 52 participants including eight graduate students. The program committee was cochaired by Hussam Amrouch of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Bei Yu of Chinese University of Hong Kong. The program included 30 contributed presentations based on submissions to the program committee as well as five invited talks. The second edition of MLCAD turned out to be quite different. Originally scheduled to be held physically in September in Iceland, it became apparent in the spring of 2020 that this option was not realistic any more. Initially, it was postponed by two months to November, hoping that by then travel options would be available again. In May, it was decided that an online version was the only realistic option. Various options were considered for conducting MLCAD virtually. The usual well-known problems had to be dealt with.