Po Jui Shih 施柏睿

/ˈpō ˈray ˈshē/ a.k.a. Elton Shih

I’m a third-year PhD student in the Computer Systems Lab at Cornell, advised by Prof. Christopher Batten. I design hardware and the software that runs on it for genomics: coprocessors for universal sequence alignment, mapping raw nanopore signal against pangenome graphs, and real-time selective sequencing on FPGAs.

I’m increasingly interested in how accelerators scale: data movement, memory and interconnect, and what those cost as a system grows from one chip to a rack and beyond. I’m currently at Tenstorrent working on data movement architecture. Before Cornell I was in Sydney at Audinate, building embedded systems for networked audio.

Education

M.S./Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University 2024 – Present · Ithaca, NY Advisor: Prof. Christopher Batten
B.Eng (Hons) in Computer Engineering, UNSW Sydney 2018 – 2021 · Sydney, AU Graduated with First Class Honours
Thesis title: “Hardware Accelerated Real-Time Selective Genome Sequencing”
Advisors: Prof. Sri Parameswaran, Dr. Hasindu Gamaarachchi, Dr. Hassaan Saadat

Experience

Work and research

Data Movement Architecture Intern, Tenstorrent Aug’26 – Present · Santa Clara, CA
Research Assistant, Cornell University Aug’24 – Present · Ithaca, NY
Research Engineer II, Audinate CTO Office Aug’23 – Jul’24 · Sydney, AU
Research Engineer I, Audinate CTO Office Jan’22 – Aug’23 · Sydney, AU
Casual Academic, UNSW School of CSE Feb’20 – Dec’23 · Sydney, AU
Honours Research Student, UNSW Embedded Systems Research Group Dec’20 – May’22 · Sydney, AU
R&D Intern, Audinate CTO Office Dec’19–Feb’20, Dec’20–Feb’21, Mar–Jun’21 · Sydney, AU

Teaching

ECE6745 Complex Digital ASIC Design, Cornell University TA (SP’27, SP’26)
COMP3601 Design Project A (HW-SW Co-Design), UNSW Sydney Guest lecturer (T3’23), Course designer & lecturer (T3’22), Academic tutor (T3’21)
DESN2000 Eng Design & Prof Practice (Computer Stream), UNSW Sydney Academic tutor & guest lecturer (T2’23)
COMP1521 Computer Systems Fundamentals, UNSW Sydney Academic tutor & lab assistant (T2’21)
COMP2121 Microprocessors and Interfacing, UNSW Sydney Academic tutor (T1’20)

Service

ASP-DAC, External Reviewer
2024

Research

Publications

Panomap: Unbiased Nanopore Signal Mapping with Pangenome Variation Graphs

Po Jui Shih, Zephan Sanghani, Andrea Guarracino, Hasindu Gamaarachchi, Christopher Batten

bioRxiv 2026

SMX: Heterogeneous Architecture for Universal Sequence Alignment Acceleration

Max Doblas Font, Po Jui Shih, Oscar Lostes-Cazorla, Miquel Moreto, Christopher Batten, Santiago Marco-Sola

MICRO 2025 [pdf]

Efficient real-time selective genome sequencing on resource-constrained devices

Po Jui Shih, Hassaan Saadat, Sri Parameswaran, Hasindu Gamaarachchi

GigaScience 2023 [pdf]

Talks

Towards an Edge Algorithm–Hardware Co-Design Framework for Adaptive Sampling

1st Arch4Health at MICRO, Seoul 2025 presentation [youtube]

Transitioning from FreeRTOS to Zephyr RTOS: a product refresh journey

Everything Open, Gladstone 2024 presentation [pdf]

Efficient real-time selective genome sequencing on resource-constrained devices

ABACBS, Brisbane 2023 poster [pdf]

Awards

MICRO Travel Grant
2025
Cornell Graduate Fellowship, Cornell University
2024
First Class Honours, UNSW Sydney
2021
Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis, UNSW Sydney
2021
Dean’s Honours List, UNSW Sydney
2018, 2019, 2020