Chip expert joins China university that overtook Harvard after 16 years in US

Chen has been appointed a Qiushi Distinguished Professor at the university's College of Integrated Circuits, according to a recent announcement by the Hangzhou-based institution.

At the university, Chen's research will cover manufacturing-focused electronic design automation, chip inspection and measurement, virtual manufacturing and yield optimization, advanced computational lithography and design-technology co-optimization.

Chen specializes in semiconductor manufacturing technology and spent more than 16 years at U.S. chip industry companies Anchor Semiconductor and KLA before returning to China, the South China Morning Post reported.

He began his U.S. semiconductor career at Anchor in 2008 and rose from senior software engineer to principal engineer and director of advanced research and development. After semiconductor equipment and process-control company KLA acquired Anchor in 2021, he continued there as a research scientist.

Chinese semiconductor expert Chen Ye. Photo courtesy of Zhejiang University

U.S. patent records also list Chen as an inventor of semiconductor manufacturing technologies developed at Anchor, including systems for assessing fabrication risks and detecting and tracking problematic patterns during chip production.

According to Zhejiang University, technologies developed under Chen's leadership have been deployed in mass production at major global semiconductor manufacturers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Samsung and Intel.

His work also took him repeatedly to semiconductor fabrication plants across Asia, where he developed software on-site using confidential manufacturing data, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He returned to China in 2024 to become chief scientist at Hangzhou-based semiconductor technology company Semitronix, where he led the development of ConVision. The system is China's first intelligent inspection platform covering the entire semiconductor manufacturing process.

The appointment is also a return to his alma mater. Chen earned a bachelor's degree in electronics and information engineering from Zhejiang University in 2003 and completed his doctorate there in 2008.

Zhejiang University was named the world's leading academic institution in the 2026 Nature Index released in June, ending Harvard University's 11-year run at the top. The Nature Index tracks research contributions to selected leading science and health-science journals.