Dr. Zick is the Research Director of Transformational Computing at USC ISI, leading efforts to solve problems of national importance through game-changing computer architectures, hardware and systems. He brings extensive experience with advanced government-funded research and from commercial industry including IBM, Motorola, and two startups. He studied under pioneer John H. Holland (genetic algorithms, complex adaptive systems) and was awarded a NASA Fellowship covering his Ph.D. work in Physically Adaptive Computing. His patented inventions include microarchitectures that enabled commercial products (6x86MX microprocessor), a digital superconducting flux memory, and a novel asynchronous Ising machine. Dr. Zick serves on the Microsystems Exploratory Council.

News

May 2026: We have developed a new approach to solving a class of sparse combinatorial optimization problems. Harnessing the power of collective behavior, the algorithm is exhibiting very high performance on well-known benchmarks. The algorithm and results are now available at Cosm: Collective Switched Motion for Fast and Accurate Sparse Ising Optimization. For more information or for partnering opportunities, please contact [email protected]

We design radically new computing systems that tackle optimization and intelligence problems beyond the reach of traditional architectures. Interests include:

• Advanced computer architectures
• AI accelerators - DARPA ScAN
• Collective computation
• Highly parallel implementations using FPGAs, GPUs, CPUs, ASICs
• Ising accelerators and Ising machines
• Novel uses of FPGAs
• Unconventional computing
• Superconducting digital processing
• Physics-inspired and quantum-inspired computing

Group capabilities include:

• Agile chip design, testbeds and prototype testing in USC ISI's MOSIS 2.0 and the California DREAMS hub in the DoD Microelectronics Commons
• Advanced FPGA-based solutions
• Advanced digital ASIC design
• Hardware accelerators for dramatically improved efficiency, agility or security
• Digital superconductor architectures and systems
• Novel approaches and architectures for solving optimization problems

Recent Graduate Student Members

• Akash B.
• Aditi C.
• Om A.
• Arpitha N.
• Dhyanik P.
• Jiahui W.
• Dorothy Q.

Congratulations to Transformational Computing intern Aditi on the USC ECE Outstanding Academic Achievement Award!