Bashir Al-Hashimi

Bashir was born in Baghdad, Iraq and he came to the UK in 1978 to study and went to the University of Bath where he obtained an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. He was awarded an MSc in electronics engineering from the University of Cardiff in 1986 and his PhD degree (1989) was received from the University of York with a thesis on the synthesis and integration of analogue filters, supervised by Kel Fidler. He worked in the electronics industry following his PhD in 1989 and joined the Department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at University of Southampton in 2000.

Bashir is one of only a few researchers worldwide with internationally leading expertise in both low power design and test of integrated electronic circuits and systems. His research focuses on understanding the interaction between hardware and software in constrained computing systems such as in mobile and embedded applications and how such interactions can be used through theory and experiment to achieve systems energy efficiency and enhanced hardware dependability. He has made fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions to the field of hardware-software co-design,[11][12] low power semiconductor chips test[13] and test-data compression of digital integrated circuits[14][15] and the emerging field of energy-harvesting computing.[16][17]

In 2009, he established the Pervasive Systems Centre,[18] the first multidisciplinary research centre researching the interaction of hardware and software in computing systems. He has published 6 books (including most recently Many-Core Computing: Hardware and Software, IET (2019)[19] and nearly 400 referred technical papers.

He has developed and validated new methods, tools and advanced technology demonstrators for use in integrated circuits and embedded systems design and test, which have now spread across the world. He was one of the first internationally to demonstrate through theory and experiment that the yield of low power digital integrated circuits is negatively impacted during manufacturing testing, showing through a sound theoretical framework the interplay between energy efficiency and hardware reliability of embedded systems. He was lead director on PRiME,[20] a £5.6 million EPSRC funded five-year programme (2013–2018) researching in the areas of low power, highly-parallel, reconfigurable and dependable computing and verified software design.[21]

He was also the project director for the £1.6 million Holistic battery-free electronics project,[22] aiming to develop ultra-energy-efficient electronic systems for emerging applications including mobile digital health and autonomous wireless monitoring in environmental and industrial settings.This project addressed one of the UK Electronics Design community Grand Challenges, “Batteries Not Included”. The funding of this project has played an important role in shaping and influencing the academic research agenda worldwide in powering Internet of Things devices in a sustainable way.[23]

Both projects were undertaken with a consortium of universities and industrial partners to investigate how to reduce energy consumption of electronic and computing systems, discovering the factors and understanding to make battery-free and many-core computing possible. These works are now citied regularly in reported research worldwide and examples of specific achievements include the development of algorithms for energy-harvesting computing and devising methods for reducing both dynamic and leakage power consumption of embedded systems.

He has held various academic leadership roles, starting with serving as Deputy Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), University of Southampton. In 2014, he was appointed Executive Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering at Southampton and in 2018, as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences,[24] one of the largest engineering faculties in the UK with a budget of nearly £200m, where he remains a Visiting Professor at the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).[25] In 2020, he joined King's College London to lead the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, leading the change to Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences at King's.[26] Under his leadership the faculty saw significant growth in staffing, research performance, student numbers and external academic standing.

Bashir was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to computer engineering and to industry.[2]

Elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2009.[27]

In 2012, the European Electronic Design Automation Association awarded him a DATE Fellowship for leadership and outstanding contributions to electronic design, automation and test.[28]

In 2012, he was awarded the Outstanding Service Award by the IEEE Council for Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) for serving as the General Chair of DATE 2012.[29]

Elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, 2013.[30]

In 2014, he received the Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship for his work on energy-efficient and reliable many-core computing systems.[31]

In 2020, he was awarded the IET Faraday Medal,[1] formally signing the register at a ceremony in October 2022.

In 2023, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.[32][33] His nomination from the Royal Society reads:

"Bashir M. Al-Hashimi is distinguished for pioneering theoretical and practical contributions to semiconductor microchips manufacturing test, energy-efficient computation and the emerging research discipline of energy harvesting computing. His research impact and technology transfer have been significant in academia and industry. He invented new low-power and cost effective test methods and tools for electronics system-on-chips. He pioneered use of system-level design to understand the interaction between hardware and software of embedded computing to save energy, providing the underpinning of design automation tools."

Elected in 2023 as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.[34]

Bashir is an Elected Trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering Board[35] and completed recently a term as chair of the Academy's Awards Committee. He is a Board Director of the ERA Foundation[36] and a UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF)[37] Board Trustee and Director.

He is a member of the Research England Expanding Excellence in England (E3) Fund Assessment Panel[38] and he served as a panel member on the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014[39] and the REF 2021 Engineering Panel.[40]

Bashir is married to May and they have three daughters: Sara, Haneen and Zahara.